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HINTS ON METAPHYSICS 



>?•£ 



CLASS-BOOK 



HINTS ON METAPHYSICS, 



WITH ACCOMPANYING CHART (FOR 
TEACHERS AND STUDENTS). 



PROJECTED IN - SEVEN LESSONS, WITH TWO LECTURES, AND A 

PHILOSOPHICAL POEM ON THE CONJUGATION 

OP THE "VERB TO BE." 



By J. V. BENEFICIO 

(Bryan J: Butts), 
i\ 

Professor of Elocution and Mental Philosophy. 






"Happiness consists in the right view of things." — Socrates. 



JAN^8 1886/ 

BOSTON: 

HIGHLAND SCHOOL OF MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 
No. 7 MOUNT PLEASANT PLACE. 



^l 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by 

Bryan J. BUTTS, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



J. S. Cushing & Co., Printers, 115 High Street, Boston. 



©rirtcattotu 



To HER whose name is " Marvel," whose triumphant sur- 
vival OF MORTAL CRITICS, AND MORTAL DISEASE, RENDERS 

HER A TEACHER IN THE HIGHLAND SCHOOL, 

AND 
To HER whose name is "Bertha," WHOSE IMMORTAL SPIRIT 
WAS THE INSPIRATION OF HIS "PHILOSOPHICAL POEM," — 

AND 

To ALL MEN AND WOMEN who aspire to the communion 

AND THE COURAGE OF " LOVE DlVINE," THIS LITTLE BOOK IS 

inscribed by "BENEFICIO." 



DESCRIPTION OF CHART. 

(Scale of 36 Inches.) 

The claims for the Author's Metaphysical Chart are : — 

1. That it represents, on a major scale, or plane-sphere, the logi- 
cal relation of the so-called " material " and " spiritual " universes. 

2. That it represents on a minor scale, and on the reverse side of 
the chart, the two hemispheres of " physical " and " moral " disease, 
or deflection from Life and Truth. 

3. That on the major scale it indicates the four divine principles, 
or compass, of "Infinite Reality," the " Finite " and "Infinite Ray," 
and the deflected " Shadow Ray of Light." 

4. That on the minor scale is represented the reflecting and 
deflecting angles of " Truth and Life " and " Truth and Love " ; the 
false phenomena of " cold," " cough," " consumption," etc., and the 
moral deflections from the medial line, indicated by the words, 
"God is Spirit." 



AUTHOE'S PEEFAOE. 



An increasing public interest in metaphysical subjects, 
especially in reference to healing the sick and the prepa- 
ration of students for the beneficent work, is the author's 
apology for offering these " Hints." 

Of course, the first principles of mental science have 
been stated more or less clearly, in all ages, and by many 
philosophers, from Aristotle to Berkeley. But the appli- 
cation of i ; metaphysics " to the cure of disease has had a 
new revival in the present century. 

While hospitable to all schools of thought, or modes of 
practice, the author disclaims the entire acceptance of any 
one of them. A student at this august threshold of 
knowledge, he prefers still to ask for "Light! more 
light ! " especially in the contemplation of a well of life so 
deep that even the wisest step back and ask, " What have 
we to draw with ? " 

In answer to that grave question, however, we endeavor 
to prove that there is something to draw with, and more to 
draw from; that we are exploring a mine so exhaustless 
that the deeper and wider we drill the richer and rarer are 
the treasures of " Life and Immortality." 

B. J. B. 

7 Mt. Pleasant Place, Highlands. 



CONTENTS. 



-♦<>♦- 



LESSON I. 

PAGE 

Statement of Being 1 

LESSON II. 
Genesis of Being 7 

LESSON III. 
Reflection and Deflection of Being .... 14 

LESSON IV. 
Genesis of Knowledge 21 

LESSON V. 
Transfiguration 29 

LESSON VI. 
Major and Minor Scale of Being 36 

LESSON VII. 

Retrospective Views 47 

Questions in Review 57 

LECTURES. 

1. Conjugation of the Verb "To Be" . . . . 63 

2. Conjugation of the Verb " To Love " . . . .73 

Poem 81 

Questions in Review 00 

APPENDIX. 

1. Extracts of Lectures 00 

2. Extracts of Mental Treatments 00 



PART I. 



HIGHLAND SCHOOL LESSONS. 



NOMENCLATURE. 

Spirit. — "Breath of Life" in Life (Eternal) ; Essential Reality; 
"God (or Good) Manifest." 

Soul. — Sense of Spirit ("Ego"). 

Mind. — Understanding of Spirit (or "Ego") ; Intelligence. 

Body (Spiritual). — Reflector of Mind; (Material) Deflector of 
Mind (Non-Intelligence). 

Matter (in general). — " Mind-Stuff " ; "No Matter." 

Substance. — Divine Intelligence ; Spirit. 

Reflection. — Likeness (of Spirit). 

Deflection. — No Likeness. 

Reflected Spirit. — Soul (and Body) in Health. 

Deflected Spirit. — No Soul (or Body) ; Nothing ("Disease"). 

Health. — Wholeness ; Harmony. 

Disease. — No ("Ease"); Misapprehension of Health (or Har- 
mony). 

Death. — Misapprehension of Life (Eternal). 

Evil. — Misunderstanding of Good; Ignorance. 

Sin. — Misconception of God (Einite Presumption). 

Mortal Mind. — No Mind. 

Immortal Mind. — Soul-Mirror ; Pure Mind. 

Real. — Eternal; a Principle (in Mind). 

Unreal. — Temporal; No Principle (in Mind) ; Nothing. 

Personal. — Limitation of the Impersonal ("God Manifest"). 

Man. — Divine Ego; " Son of Man"; Image of God (Good). 

Animal Man. —Not Man (Shadow of Man). 

Animal Body of Man. — No Body (No Mirror) of Man. 

Animal Soul. — No Soul (Sense) of Man. 

Species. — Eorms (Moulds) of Spirit (Eternal). 

Generation. — Involution of Spirit. 

Birth. — Evolution of Spirit. 

Growth. — Inspiration of Spirit ("Transfiguration"). 

"Space and Time." — " Succession and Duration of Thought," 
i.e., No Time nor Space in Thought (Divine). 

"Cause and Effect." — Suppositional Relations (in Space and 
Time). 

"Substance and Shadow" (Phenomenal). — Real (Eternal) Re- 
lations of "Mind and Matter" and "Soul and Body." 

Einite. — Limited ; " Phenomenal " (as " Matter") 

Infinite. — Limitless ; Eternal (as Truth). 

Metaphysics. — Science (Demonstrated Truth) of Being. 



HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

By "Teacher" and "Student." 



LESSON I. 

STATEMENT OP BEING. 

Teacher. The true statement of being lies at the basis 
of metaphysical science. 

Student. What is science ? 

T. Demonstrated truth. 

S. What is metaphysical science? 

T. The science or demonstration of being. 

S. What is being ? 

T. Being is real existence ; whatever is. 

S. Does metaphysical science teach that whatever is, is 
right ? 

T. Not under the accepted interpretation of whatever 
" is." Metaphysics discovers the being or entity of right, 
and hence, the non-being or non-entity of wrong. If 
wrong, like right, were an entit3 r , there could be no reliable 
basis for science (demonstrated truth) , physical or meta- 
physical ; neither terra flrma for man, nor resurrection 
for angel. 

S. Are not right and wrong inseparable concepts of 
the mind? 

T. Inseparable as entity and non-entity ; but right is 
the entity, and wrong the non-entity. 



2 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

S. Why not say they are co-eternal entities ? 

T. Because that would be a contradiction of the laws 
of mind and the first principles of reasoning. If wrong, 
like right, were an entity, I could argue that you ought to 
accept a proposition because it is wrong. 

JS. What, then, is your definition of the term " entity " ? 

T. Eeal being ; the opposite of which must be unreal. 
Wrong is unreal. 

S. And therefore really wrong? 

T. And therefore really excluded from the premises of 
being ; otherwise we could disprove the axiom that two 
entities cannot occupy the same place and time. 

S. How do we know that right is an entity ? 

T. By the moral sense. 

JS. Does not the moral sense affirm the same thing of 
wrong? 

T. Nay ; it affirms directly the opposite thing of wrong, 
that it is neither an entity nor a reflection of an entity. 
It must be a suppositional (impossible) deflection of the 
being of right. 

S. How does this philosophy relate to what are called 
our moral obligations ? 

T. It secures their fulfilment (in reason and religion) , 
as the loyalty of citizens is secured by their recognition 
of right as distinguished from wrong in the rule of the 
State. The sense of wrong is intensified in the presence 
of right because wrong has no sovereignty, that is, no 
being, save in our finite misunderstanding. 

S. What is finite being? 

T. A reflection of the infinite. 

S. How is being expressed, or by what formula? 

T. By the general term " Mind and Matter." 

S. What is the evidence of being ? 



STATEMENT OF BEING. 6 

T. The being of both mind and matter can be manifest 
to mind only. Therefore all evidence of being is mental 
evidence ; that is, evidence of the being of mind. 

S. On what, then, does the being of matter depend for 
proof ? 

T. Upon the being of mind, that is, upon mental ob- 
servation, since there can be no other. 

S. What does mind observe ? 

T. Mind, whether finite or infinite, can observe noth- 
ing exterior to itself, or outside of its own being. Heuce, 
outside of the being of mind, finite or infinite, there can 
be nothing for mind to observe. The being of mind 
must, therefore, exclude the being of matter, except as 
a manifestation or reflection of the being of mind. 

S. Are not mind and matter inseparable ideas ? 

T. They must be, since matter is mental phenomenon. 

S. Why not say that mind is material phenomenon ? 

T. Because that would not alter the fact, but only 
prove the mentality of matter. 

S. Could these inseparable ideas ever have existed 
otherwise ? 

T. They must be eternal in genesis, that is, the dual 
idea of God or infinite mind. 

S. What are the forms of being ? 

T. They are subjective and objective, mind and mat- 
ter, or God and Spirit. 

S. Do you mean to imply that all being has form — 
subjective as well as objective? 

T. How can the objective effect (or relation) have 
form, if the subjective cause (or relation) be formless? 
The castle must be u in the air" before it can be objec- 
tively constructed ; that is, it must be in the mind. 

S. Is the form of man in the mind of man? 



4 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. The form of man, and every other conceivable form, 
is in the mind of God, and thence reflected (or deflected) 
in the mind of man. 

S. I see that you include "God and Spirit" in your 
statement of the " forms " of being. 

T. All we know of being is what we know of its organ- 
ized forms. Of an unformed tree, mineral, animal, angel, 
or deity, we can know nothing. 

S. What, then, can physical science know of " unor- 
ganized" matter? 

T. Nothing. Even the ' ' germ cell ' ' or primal ' i atom " 
must be already formed, as an antecedent condition of 
formation. 

S. Then you would say that the Spirit of God must be 
in the form of God ? 

T. I would reverse the statement, and say that the 
form of God is in the Spirit of God, whether it be atom 
or angel. 

S. What do you regard as the highest manifestation of 
the form of God? 

T. The form of man and woman. 

S. What do you mean by the form of God as distin- 
guished from God? 

T. The forms of vital force, the universal phenomena 
of being, mystically named the " Word of God" or 
"Breath of Life." 

S. What do you mean by the term "matter" as related 
to "spirit"? 

T. Matter is the vitalized form of spirit. It is the 
objectively organized germ, or protoplasm, and its physi- 
cal evolutions. 

S. Who, or what, evolves the forms of matter? 

T. The forms of spirit. 



STATEMENT OF BEING. O 

S. Who, or what, evolves universally the forms of 
spirit? 

T. God, or Infinite Spirit. 

S. Is God personal or impersonal spirit? 

T. Both. But it is not easy to conceive of the imper- 
sonal. Some metaphysicians make God a principle, as if 
principle transcended spirit. The illusion is analogous to 
that which makes matter transcend mind. " Twice two 
is four," they say, and "that is a principle of mathe- 
matics." But the principle is a non-entity outside of its 
mental conception. The laws of numbers exist in the 
mind (finite or infinite), and nowhere else. In other 
words, they are spiritual concepts, since there can be no 
other. Hence, the term Infinite Spirit or God is the 
logical opposite of Finite spirit or man. In the sense of 
real being, God is apprehended as Infinite Father and 
Mother through the exaltation, and not the obliteration of 
our finite humanity. God must be as relatively (or abso- 
lutely) personal to his spirit and its manifestations as is 
man to his own soul and body. Paradoxical as it may 
seem, God must be the one impersonal Personality, the 
infinite I AM. 

S. What is soul? 

T. Soul is likeness or image of infinite spirit, reflected 
(or deflected) by finite mind. 

S. What, then, is your definition of mind? 

T. Mind is spiritualized matter, or, vice versa, material- 
ized spirit. It is intelligence in the human, sensation in 
the animal, life in the tree, and cohesion and disintegra- 
tion in the mineral world. It is universal propulsion of 
matter versus universal impulsion of . spirit. 

Sn What do you mean by impulsion as distinguished 
from propulsion ? 



6 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. By impulsion we mean impulse from within, that is, 
spiritual causation. By propulsion we mean objective 
phenomena or motion. In other words, matter is mind 
in motion ; spirit is motion in mind, that is, emotion or 
inspiration. Spirit is real being or substance. 

S. Why do you employ the term ' c spirit " ? 

T. Because it is our highest conception of universal 
substance or real being, that is, the being of God. The 
objective phenomena of such being is the visible universe. 
The universe is "uni" that is, one or homogeneous in 
nature. 

S. Is this universal one mind or matter, or is it both? 

T. Mind and matter are one, as we have shown, but 
that one is mind. • 

S. Do they hold the relation of cause and effect? 

T. They hold the relation (by spiritual reflection) of 
substance and shadow. That is to say, matter, is the 
mirror of mind, and mind is a reflection (or deflection) 
of spirit, or real being. 

S. What is your complete statement of such being ? 

T. God is Spirit; Spirit is Life, Love, Truth, and 
Good. Man is the image or likeness of spirit, and hence 
is spiritual in genesis, — a child of God. Matter is the 
opposite of spirit and of man, existing only as a shadow 
of spirit, and with no independent life or being of its own. 



GENESIS OF BEING. 



LESSON II. 

GENESIS OF BEING. 

Student. Then man is not born of matter? 

Teacher. No; man is born of spirit. "Man is the 
spirit of man ; but the soul reveals the image or likeness 
of spirit in a healthy mind and body, and not in the 
deflected caricatures of men and women whom we see. 

S. You have spoken of the principles of Life, Truth, 
Love, and Good, as being of the divine substance. The 
opposites of these attributes are Death, Hate, Error, and 
Evil. Can these opposites be real? 

T. No ; this would be a contradiction of real being, 
the opposites of which cannot themselves be real. 

S. How do we know that Life, Love, etc., are attri- 
butes of real being ? 

T. For the reason that all we know, or can know, of 
such being is what we know of life. Of death we. can 
know nothing but the appearance. Hence, that is all 
death can be to us. 

S. Can death be real, even in appearance? 

T. It may be said that it cannot, in truth, be real, even 
in appearance, since it must be supposed to be alive in 
order to appear otherwise. 

S. Then death, and consequently disease, is a pure 
supposition ? 

T. Verily, they are mistakes, misapprehensions of life 
and health. 

S. And do you include moral diseases — Hate, Sin, and 
Evil — as equally unreal ? 



8 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. They are of the same genesis. In other terms, 
they were never generated. Only Life, Love, and Truth 
can generate ; for generation is spiritual and not material 
in causation. Hatred, Sin, and Error are impotent. 
" We can do nothing against the truth," said Paul, u but 
for the truth." 

8. Then we are all alive and well; that is, well in 
truth? 

T. Just so. And the sooner we discover the truth, 
the wiser and better are we ; for we shall then find our 
true ego. We shall return to our Father's house, from 
whose life and love we never can stray. 

8. But that is contrary to all our material understand- 
in g. We must shut our eves. 

T. No ; we must open them. 

8. But we must shut them on evil? 

T. Verily ; else we cannot open them on good. 

8. That is to say, open them on the outward and dying 
universe. 

T. Nay ; on the inward and living universe — the uni- 
verse of spirit. 

8* But if disease and death are not realities to spirit, 
why do they seem to be so to man ? 

T. They are not realities to man in the likeness of 
spirit or real being. They seem real only to man astray 
from truth, and through the deflection of his material 
sense, which substitutes error for truth, or evil for good. 

8. How could this substitution take place? Does God, 
or Good, originate evil? 

T. Evil has no origin. The material misunderstand- 
ing alone affirms its existence. 

8. Is the material understanding itself an illusion, that 
it should ignorantly testify to the reality of evil? 



GENESIS OF BEING. U 

T. No ; but material misunderstanding is illusive. 
The material understanding is not an illusion in its own 
sphere, but relatively to the spiritual understanding. It 
is not the office of the material understanding to affirm 
what is, but only what appears to be. This is the limita- 
tion of physical science. It affirms the sun to rise in the 
east, until corrected by the observation that the earth 
revolves upon its axis ; both observations being phe- 
nomenal only. It sees an inverted picture of the external 
universe in the retina of the eye, and then attempts to 
correct the illusion by pretending to walk upright. 
Whereas, to the spiritual understanding, there is no other 
way to walk. 

S. What is the spiritual .understanding ? 

T. It is the intuitive or subjective faculty of knowl- 
edge, by which we perceive ourselves as distinct from our 
physical bodies and the material universe. 

S. Is this the only office of the spiritual intuition? 

T. No ; we not only distinguish ourselves from matter 
below us, but from spirit above us. As souls, we are 
capable of conceiving of Infinite Soul, or Spirit. In a 
metaphysical sense, we may declare that God thinks, and 
so do we, and our thoughts " do wander through 
eternity." 

S. What is eternity? 

T. It is well named the " dwelling-place of God," or 
" the ever-present moral world." 

S. Do we consciously enter eternity at death? 

T. No ; we enter eternity at birth. 

S. You mean the spiritual birth ? 

T. There is no other birth. 

S. Do you mean to imply that the u natural birth" is 
an illusion of material sense ? 



10 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 



T. So far as man is concerned. Man is not the 
" natural man." 

8. Is not the natural man, that is, the " first man," an 
animal ? 

T. Only in appearance. Man is the "second man," 
who is " the Lord from heaven." 

8. Has the animal-man a soul ? 

T. No ; but, until better taught, the soul has an 
animal-man. The animal is in the man, and not man in 
the animal. 

8. Your ideas are novel, if not true. 

T. Or else the} T are novel because true. 

S. Then man is an uninstructed animal? 

T. Not by any means. The "animal" is the unin- 
structed man. So far as he knows anything, he knows 
he is man, and not animal. 

S. Then the animal is not the " coming man"? 

T. No ; a man is a man ; and the animal is his reced- 
ing shadow. 

S. But does not the animal foreshadow the man ? 

T. No ; the man foreshadows himself. He comes not 
by the evolution of his shadow, but by the involution of 
his soul. That is, he comes by germinal inspiration. 
The rose, to prophetic insight, is in the seed of the rose, 
as much as in its blossom or calyx ; and the spirit is all 
there is in the rose or the man. 

This is all there is in species. Species are spiritual 
and eternal. There never was, nor ever will be, an era 
when man, plant, mineral, or angel, were not. 

8. Whence, then, is the origin of species? 

T. They have no origin. The oak does not come of 
the acorn, nor man from protoplasm ; nor vice versa. To 
be a man is not to come to be from the ape, nor to ape to 






GENESIS OF BEING. 11 

be from sea-jelly. Man is the mind of man in the mind 
of God. The human mind is not held in solution in the 
world-ether ; but the world-ether is impregnated, and all 
species made possible, by the world-spirit, which is the 
human mind inspired by the divine. 

S. Are you not speaking in figures, and from the realm 
of mystery? 

T. The realm of "mystery" is the realm of reality. 
It is the Milky- way, resolvable into suns and planets. 

S. So the genesis of being is as poetic as it is scien- 
tific ; and poetry is as real as prose ? 

T. It is more so. 

8. How, then, would you explain the literal, that is, 
the real, origin of man, — the infancy of the race? 

T. I would not attempt it through the methods of 
physical scientists alone. Their u monadology," "mo- 
lecular motion," are no more conclusive than the idealism 
of poetry or song. I would no sooner quote Darwin, or 
Huxley, on the babyhood of man, than the metaphysical 
poet, when he asks and answers the following ques- 
tions : — 

" Where did you come from, baby dear 1 " 
" Out of Everywhere, into Here." 

" Where did you get those eyes so blue ? " 
"Out of the sky, as I came through." 

" Where did you get that little tear % " 
" I found it waiting when I got here." 

" What makes your cheek like a warm white rose ? " 
" I saw something better than any one knows/' 

" Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss % " 
" Three angels gave me, at once, a kiss." 



12 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

" Where did you get this pearly ear 1 " 
" God spoke, and it came out to hear." 

" Where did you get those arms and hands 1 " 
" Love made itself into bonds and bands." 

" Feet ! whence are you, you darling things ? " 
" From the same box of the cherub's wings." 

" How did these all just come to be you? " 
" God thought about me, and so I grew." 

8.- Then the growth of species, as well as their origin, 
lies in the divine substance ; that is, in the thought of 
God ? What is the distinction between the finite and the 
infinite thought? 

T. The finite reflects the infinite, though no part of it ; 
as the mirror reflects the object, though no part of the 
object. 

S. An object implies space. The object, in this case, is 
God. Can God occupy space? 

T. All the space there is. Space is finite. It exists 
only in deflected thought. So of time. Space is succes- 
sion, and time the duration, of conscious thoughts. They 
are not reflections of the soul's being in God, since, in 
God, neither space nor time can have being. 

8. What bearing has this view of our being on disease ? 

T. It leaves neither time nor space for its existence. 
Disease was never conceived, gestated, or born, except in 
the finite thought. And in thought, as Dr. W. F. Evans 
says, " It is just as easy to locate disease in the foot as 
in the head ; or in a post as in any part of the human 
body," since it is but zero, and will count only where you 
put it. 

8. Can it be made as real in a post as in the human 
body? 



GENESIS OF BEING. 13 

T. It can be made as unreal. The psychic subject 
may believe himself a post, and have the backache. 

5. Yes ; but the psychic subject has a back of his 
own. 

T. How so, since you can push a pin into his back, 
and he will behave like a post? 

8. But there must be a back somewhere. The mag- 
netizer, if not the psychic subject, must have a back. 

T. He has a backer. 

6. And who is his backer? 

T. God, in whose name all pain and disease must dis- 
appear. 

S. Then we can exorcise our aches as nonentities? 

T. Verily ; we can transfer them to a post ; in other 
words, to the nowhere, and the no-whence, they came ; for 
we are born in the image of God. 



14 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 



LESSON III. 

REFLECTION VeVSUS DEFLECTION. 

Student. But an image in a mirror is supposed to be 
a perfect reflection, or u throwing back," of the whole 
form and features. 

Teacher. Not necessarily, except the mirror and its 
focus be perfect. A concave or a convex mirror will 
apparently distort the features. 

S. How, then, can the imperfect finite reflect, or 
" throw back," the infinite? 

T. The finite is no more imperfect as finite than is the 
infinite. The reflection, as distinguished from the deflec- 
tion of the features of truth, lies in the right focal rela- 
tion of mind and bod}', or soul and spirit, to infinite 
spirit. 

S. Of what is the human body the mirror ? 

T. Of the human mind (by reflection or deflection) . 

S. Of what is the human soul a reflection (or a 
deflection) ? 

T. Of infinite soul, or the spirit of truth, life, love, &c. 

S. What is reflected soul? 

T. It is immortal mind, the " Mind of Truth." 

8. What is deflected soul? 

T. It is mortal mind, mind in error. (No mind.) 

S. If the mirror of the mind, that is, the body, be 
destroyed partially, as in disease, or entirely, as in the 
phenomenon of death, what is the consequence? 

T. The image in the mirror disappears to the mate- 



REFLECTION VS. DEFLECTION. 15 

rial sense ; but the soul or immortal mind, being in the 
likeness of spirit-substance, remains to the spiritual 
consciousness. 

S. What is your definition of substance ? 

T. Substance si(&-stands, that is, understands or holds 
up. In a metaphysical sense (which is the true sense) it 
is understanding or intelligence. As such, it is poten- 
tially " under, over, and apart from all appearance of 
matter." God is the Infinite understanding ; and we are 
spiritually sons and daughters of God ; bearing the like- 
ness of eternal life and love, truth and good, wisdom and 
justice. 

S. How do the best thinkers define the term " meta- 
physics " ? 

T. As the science of spirit-substance, or of " God and 
the human soul/' 

S. What is physics ? 

T. The science of matter, u natural philosophy." 

S. Does metaphysics include physics ? 

T. Yes ; it includes physics as substance includes 
shadow. The substance is real ; the shadow unreal. In 
the highest metaphysical sense, God is substance ; and the 
universe is shadow. 

S. What are some of the general terms you employ to 
express the relation of substance and shadow, or the 
apposition of the real and unreal? 

T. Reflection and deflection, or immortal and " mortal 
mind"; soul and body, or me and not-me-below-me ; 
soul and spirit, or me and not-me-above-me ; or the infi- 
nite me and the mirrored soul-and-body me and not me ; 
soul-solvents and chemicals ; thoughts and things ; compass 
and conscience; God and Nature; or " mind and mat- 
ter " ; heavenly Father and Mother ; and earthly son and 



16 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

daughter ; spiritual versus material genesis of worlds and 
of world souls. And the moral opposites : right and 
wrong ; truth and error ; good and evil ; and love and 
hate. 

S. If metaphysics includes physics as substance in- 
cludes shadow, does it not also exclude physics (when 
the mirror is broken) as substance excludes shadow? 

T. Yes; metaphysics excludes physics as the real 
excludes the unreal. 

S. How, then, can the unreal shadow or diseased body 
become really well, or the opposite " mortal mind" really 
become immortal? 

T. The u diseased body" is not the body of man 
(which is spiritual) ; nor is the " mortal mind" the mind, 
or soul of man ; and hence the term is somewhat contra- 
dictory in definition. The mortal mind and body, being 
deflected shadow, and not reality, cannot become anything. 
But the immortal mind or very-soul, being a reflection of 
truth, that is, of the spirit or mind of God, has but to 
assert itself, and disease disappears from the body or 
mind-image, as soon as it disappears from the very-soul 
or spirit-image. 

S. What is your exact definition of mortal mind? 

T. It is soul in error, or out of true relation to finite 
and infinite. 

S. What are we to understand by the soul in such a 
relation? Is it substance, or is it shadow? 

T. Both ; substance relatively to the body, which, as 
a shadow, obeys the mind ; but shadow or reflection, 
relatively to God or Spirit, whom, in its finite freedom, it 
obeys, or thinks to disobey. 

S. Then the soul is not really free to disobey God, 
and hence cannot be lost or annihilated? 



REFLECTION VS. DEFLECTION. 17 

T. No ; God is not liable to treason, or rebellion, uDder 
his divine government. u The wages of sin is death : " 
not to God or his image, but to sin; and when sin is 
effaced from the mirror, the sinner discovers his true like- 
ness, and the abortrveness of his attempt to realize any 
other likeness. Hence, soul or "mortal-mind" disease, 
no more than " physical" disease, can be reality to truth. 
God is truth, that is, real being. The soul of man, that 
is, the very-soul, the immortal man, exists in the likeness 
of real being ; and neither real being nor its likeness can 
ever become non-being. 

The little child in the brambles, away from the true 
path, may think it is lost, and lost because of its disobe- 
dience. So it may seem to be, also, to its earthly parents ; 
but not so to the heavenly, in whose garden no seeds of 
evil could ever germinate, or footsteps of sin or sorrow 
be taken. 

S. That seems like the true gospel. 

T. It is the true gospel; the gospel of " glad tidings 
and great joy" to all peoples. A gospel whose "leaves" 
of truth are for the " healing of the nations," as well as 
the cure of physical disease. 

S. How does the metaphysical law apply to political 
problems and the social state ? 

T. It lifts the depressed masses above their material 
limitations, by assuring them of the omnipotence of truth 
and right, under whose recognized reality no such limita- 
tions could continue to exist. It disabuses all classes of 
belief, in the power of evil or injustice, in the constitution 
of nature or of nations. 

S. Wherein does this new gospel differ from the "con- 
solations of religion," which have been offered to the 
poor in all ages ? 



18 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. It differs radically, not by ignoring, but by affirming, 
the true religion. Instead of despising the human bod} T , 
by dropping it into the grave, it renders it immortal by 
making it a fit temple for the Holy Spirit. As it saves 
the soul, not in the death, but in the life of the body, 
so it saves the social state, not by revolution,, but by 
evolution of the "body politic." It promotes evolution, 
not by engaging, but by disengaging belligerent parties. 
It does this in the name of a third party, in whose wisdom 
all parties are one in the right, when they have discovered 
the impotency of the wrong. 

S. Then nations, too, are "alive and well,' ' so soon 
as they discover the metaphysical truth of being. But 
where are we to look for the causes of evil and sorrow ? 

T. Nowhere ; they have no causes in spiritual science. 

S. Where, then, shall we look for life and health? 

T. Everywhere. God is omnipresent. 

S. Then your metaphysics is so all-inclusive as to 
accept the whole hydra-headed monster, Evil, Error, Sin, 
Sickness, and Death, as a part of your ultimate philoso- 
phy of health ? 

T. By no means. How can metaphysics include these 
nonentities as entities? Nay; metaphysics includes only 
the real. 

S. How can it include the real if it excludes anything ? 

T. This is the third time you have personified the 
impersonal by dignifying evil as a reality. Metaphysics 
excludes nothing, for the reason that it includes all there 
is. To cure disease it looks away from or beyond the 
mortal body altogether, as being a shadow and no part of 
the real man. The real man is a reflection of the mind 
of Truth, and hence cannot be diseased. Disease is a 
deflection from the truth. 



REFLECTION VS. DEFLECTION. 19 

S. What do you mean by the term ' i deflection " ? 

T. A false reflection. It is analogous to refraction in 
material perspective, which deceives the eye, so that the 
shadow is mistaken for the substance. 

S. How is the visual sense deceived ? 

T. By reference to our " Metaphysical Chart," you 
will see that the " material ray" of light, in passing from 
a rarer to a denser medium, is bent out of its course, 
causing the upright shaft, " truth," to appear crooked, 
although it is straight. 

Under the head of "Moral" deceptions, the first de- 
parture from "Truth" is named "Error"; the second, 
"Sin"; the third, " Satan," or personified " Evil." 

Under the head of physical deception, or departure 
from Life, "Cold," "Cough," "Consumption," are 
named as illustrations. 

On the other hand, the "infinite ray" of light from 
the "Spiritual Sun" passes through the denser medium 
in a direct line, and unrefracted; thus sharply indicating 
the law of distinction between the real and unreal, both 
in the sphere of relative, and that of absolute, knowl- 
edge. 

S. If the c 4 spiritual or infinite ray " be the only real 
ray, how can there be any refraction of a material ray, or 
any such ray to be refracted? 

T. There cannot be ; nor any such ray to be reflected. 
All light is spiritual, known only to the mind. 

S. If you cannot speak, in truth, of the refraction of 
the material ray (as in the shadow in the water, or the 
image in the mirror) , how can you speak of the deflection 
of the spiritual ra}', as in moral error or disease? 

T. I cannot. There can be no real deflection of truth. 
We employ the term as applying, not to spiritual reality, 
but to phenomenal illusion. 



20 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

S. Whence is the illusion? 

T. That is as if you were to ask : Whence is nothing, 
or no-thing? Of course, no thing can have no " whence," 
that is, no origin. Deflected health is no health. Health 
is real. No health, that is, disease, is unreal. 

S. Are not health and disease relative phenomena ? 

T. Relative as the real to the unreal ; as harmony to 
discord ; as truth to untruth. There is no truth in dis- 
ease : only untruth. 

S. Do you not employ the same material senses in the 
discovery of disease, that you employ in the recognition 
of health? 

T. I do not employ the material senses in either case. 

S. Well, then, the spiritual senses? 

T. The spiritual senses can discover spirit only, which 
is life and health. Disease has no spirit. It is a ghost, 
a phantom, nothing, mistaken for something by ignorance 
only. 

S. How does the mistake happen ? 

T. That is precisely what does not happen. You can- 
not violate a principle. We cannot even say that twice 
one is three, since we cannot say what we cannot think. 
In other words, such a statement is unthinkable. 

So life is a principle, and health its only phenomenon. 
The opposite of life, or death, is no more thinkable, in 
reality, than is the equation : 0=1. All we mean, or can 
mean, by the term " death" is phenomenon. Though our 
knowledge of "life" is also phenomenal, it is real, that is, 
experimental ; whereas, of its opposite we can know noth- 
ing by experience ; nor can any such experience be 
reported to us. 



GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE. 21 



LESSON IV. 

GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

Student. Then there is such a thing as relative knowl- 
edge ? 

Teacher. There is such a thing as knowledge of shadow 
and perspective, which is the proper domain of material 
science, whose assumptions of the reality of " solids " and 
"fluids," of " fixed laws," of "cohesion," "disintegra- 
tion," or "gravitation," as sucJi, are purely empirical. 
Even its latest concession to spiritual philosophy, that 
there is a "little feeling" in matter, is unscientific in 
statement. 

S. What would be the scientific statement ? 

T. It would be that there seems to be a "little matter" 
in feeling. 

S. What would be your metaptrysical statement? 

T. That there is a little "matter" in "feeling," and 
by virtue of its reflection of the divine sympathy, — the 
real being of God. 

S. Then the mistake of the material understanding is 
corrected by the spiritual, or by absolute knowledge. 
What can be the basis of such knowledge ? 

T. Its relation to the relative, which is but a shadow of 
spiritual reality. 

S. You are levelling physical science, and seem to 
leave us no terra firma to stand upon. 

T. Well, physical science pretends to stand us on the 
"solid earth"; but in case of an earthquake, where is 



22 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

the "terra firma" ? The spiritual forces (and there are 
no other forces) which underlie the earth, and cause it 
either to "cohere" or to "quake," must be more reli- 
able as well as more powerful, as a standing-place for the 
spirit, or the real man, than any- narrow footpath of mate- 
rial knowledge. 

S. Would you say that the spirit is all there is to stand, 
and that only " matter " can fall? 

T. Just so. Spirit stands on principle as distinguished 
from expedient. If we could bridge the opening chasm 
at our feet, and so escape the phenomenon of death, the 
act would be an expedient, and all that physical science 
could do for us. But if the expedient fails and the Ego 
is still intact, our survival of the earthquake, as spirits, 
establishes a spiritual principle, and illustrates the genesis 
of real knowledge, which is through the spiritual sense or 
intuition. 

S. Why is the spiritual sense, or intuition, more reli- 
able in the realm of real knowledge than the material 
senses ? 

T. Because all knowledge of being is necessarily spirit- 
ual, and spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Life 
and health are a reflex of the mind, which is a reflex of 
spirit and not of matter. 

S. How does the spiritual sense discover the unreality 
of disease and death? 

T. Through its perception of the reality of their oppo- 
sites, — life and health. 

S. What, then, is the pivotal law of cure ? 

T. The spiritual understanding ; such an attitude of 
the soul to the radiation of divine love and wisdom as 
will discover the truth. The law of attitudes lies at the 
basis of metaphysical knowledge. 



GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE. 23 

S. Can you give some illustration of such a law? 

T. The flame in the soul of the upright man burns up- 
rightly. To think uprightly is to walk uprightly. Or, 
vice versa, to walk erect with deliberate purpose is to 
become erect in spirit. 

All attitudes are psychological. The sight of a person 
kneeling in prayer with face to the orient, or standing in 
awe with eyes uplifted to the infinite dome, excites 
humility or adoration. As are our attitudes so are we. 
If we occupy in thought the centre of the zodiac, we are 
in rapport with real being, and can affirm because we 
know that we are a reflection of the Eternal Me and can- 
not die. The Ego then declares : — 

"The heavens, gathered as a scroll, 
My resurrection prove ; 
The ' still small voices ' of my soul 
The universes move. 

"And so the compass of my stars 
I'll trust on land or sea ; 
Glad voices hear, thro' earthquake jars, 
Addressed to you and me. 

"Above the storm and tempest's sway, 
Far out upon life's sea, 
Eternal sunbeams gild the day 
Of .my nativity." 

S. Has any man ever illustrated your gospel by heal- 
ing the sick through his perfect relation to the Infinite 
Me? 

T. The man Jesus has at least given the world a 
strong assurance of his possession of " the spirit without 
measure." 

S. Does this power require the experience of a new or 
spiritual birth ? 



24 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. It requires an understanding of what that birth is, 
that it can never occur while the soul is in its material 
beliefs ; or, so long as death, evil, or error are accepted 
as realities in the divine universe. 

8. What is material belief ? 

T. Belief in the power of matter over mind, or of mind 
over spirit. In other words, of body over mind, or of 
body and mind over soul and spirit. It is belief of evil 
in matter. It is spiritual scepticism. 

8. What is } T our view of the so-called " faith cure " as 
a mode of healing ? 

T. Faith in spirit is better than faith in matter ; but 
knowledge is better than either. Pure reason or demon- 
strated common sense, is the " magician's wand" of the 
true healer ; and pure reason leads to the discovery that 
the material universe is but the inverted or deflected 
shadow of the spiritual. 

S. Does pure reason or common sense discard the use 
of medicines or drugs in all cases ? 

T. Pure reason will reduce medicine to well-regulated 
diet. It recognizes water, air, light, electricity, and mag- 
netism as healing agencies. But it denies the potency of 
drug or regimen, to permanently cure the sick man in his 
sins. 

8. What do you mean by the sick man's sins ? 

T. I mean his blasphemy against the truth. He sa}'s, 
"Yesterday I was sick, to-day I am well"; both state- 
ments being a part of the same falsehood. 

S. Well, what would you have him say? 

T. " Yesterday I was a hypocrite ; to-day I have dis- 
covered it." 

8. »Then sickness is hypocrisy as well as blasphemy? 

T. What else can it be, since it makes a pretension to 



GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE. 25 

reality in the presence of God, and exalts material above 
spiritual knowledge? The truth says, "I am spirit and 
all the matter there is." Error says, "I am matter and 
all the truth there is." 

S. Can the materialist give no reliable evidence in the 
realm of true knowledge ? 

T. Not as a materialist; he is a false witness. He 
contradicts his own testimon}^. Himself a spirit by gene- 
sis, he yet declares, " I am not spirit, I am matter. I am 
evolved from protoplasm ; that is all I know." 

S. How can the materialist know this and not know 
more? 

T. He is modest. He will not affirm "beyond what 
he knows." He is not so modest, however, as not to see 
beyond his u knows." Otherwise he could not see at all. 
Nor is he yet so immodest as to undertake to walk on his 
" knows." Otherwise he could not walk at all. Practi- 
cally he cannot act on w r hat he assumes to know ; that is, 
material causation, but only on what he assumes not to 
know ; that is, spiritual causation. Were he so practical 
as to try to act on the little he knows, as a materialist, he 
would soon discover that he did not know even that little. 
For all he can know of himself or aught else, as matter, 
is, necessarily, what he (antecedently or coevally) knows 
of himself as spirit. 

S. Is all knowledge, then, of spiritual genesis? 

T. Certainly ; matter cannot generate — even igno- 
rance. 

S. Then there is no ignorance ? 

T. Not to spirit, which is omniscient and can reflect 
knowledge only. 

S. Is the law of mental reflection analogous to what 
is called " mirage"? In certain localities the atmosphere 



26 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

appears to mirror objects, as of a horse and rider, who 
are seen in the sky. 

T. One's conception may be aided by that illustration, 
save that the spirit-sky mirrors only the real horse and 
rider ; that is, the spirit of each, as distinguished from 
the shadow it casts. The spirit of the horse or rider is 
all there is of either. This is what we mean when we say 
there is no ignorance in the universe. Ignorance is but 
the supposed absence of knowledge ; whereas, knowledge 
is infinite and cannot be absent. 

8. Then to "know at all is to know spiritually, as God 
knows ? 

T. Yes ; and to be at all, is to be immortal as God is. 
It is too late, after we know we are, to discover that we 
are not. 

8. Then there is, in reality, no knowledge of life but 
that of the eternal life, and this is the knowledge that 
discovers the nonentity of death or disease ? 

T. Verily ; nor is there any other love but the eternal 
love ; nor any other good or truth but the eternal. 

S. In what does this focal attitude of the human mind 
to the divine consist? 

T. In the discovery of the right relation of the " Ego," 
the "I," or the '"me," to the " not-me." On this dis- 
cover} 7 depends the clear reflection of real being ; that is, 
of eternal life. 

The first step in this discovery is the recognition of the 
self-evident "me." The second step is the recognition 
of the two inferential " not-me's." First, theme below 
me or the physical me. Second, the me above me ; that 
is, the spiritual me or spirit. 

The me below me is the ' ; mortal " mind and body ; the 
me above me is the immortal soul of me ; the image of 
God. 



GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE. 27 

S. What is the logical use of physical science ? 

T. The discovery that matter is not me. 

S. What is the logical use of metaphysical science ? 

T. The discovery that spirit is me. 

8. What do you regard as the misuse of physical 
science ? 

T. Calling the human mind away from the true source 
of knowledge, — the spiritual universe. 

8. What is the misuse of metaphysical science ? 

T. The recognition of evil in the divine universe, in- 
volving a mixture of truth and error, right and wrong, 
and life and death, in the constitution of both matter and 
spirit. This is the basis of the " Fall of Man," and of 
the whole " Scheme of Salvation " from a fictitious and 
personified enemy of God, who is supposed to have power 
to disturb the harmony of Nature and Providence. 

8. What is the effect of the discovery of the true 
image of God in man ? 

T. The obliteration of all other images. 

8. How do you disprove the truth of the accepted 
belief in the image of Evil or Satan? 

T. By proving the truth of the accepted belief in the 
image of God. God is declared to be All-powerful Good- 
ness, Love, and Truth, in whose presence evil and error 
are compelled to flee away. If these latter, then, are not 
realities in the Divine Being, how can they be reflected, as 
such, in the being of man or nature? Logically and in- 
evitably, they are deflections from and not reflections of 
the truth to our finite reason. To the Infinite Reason or 
Logos, they cannot exist, even as deflections or shadows 
of reality. They are excluded from the premises of 
being. 

8. True knowledge, then, consists in removing the 



28 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

deflected shadows — sin, sickness, or death — from the 
mirror of the human mind ? 

T. Verily ; and so from the human body, by discover- 
ing it to be (as a phenomenon of the soul) immortal 
through transfiguration. 



' ' TRANSFIGURATION." 29 



LESSON V. 



TRANSFIGURATION." 



Student, What is the significance and application of 
the term " Transfiguration"? 

Teacher. "Trans" means u across," or "over." 
Figure is form, or feature. Metaphysically, it is the, 
mind that figures, and the mind that transfigures. 
The idea of transfiguration is all-inclusive. It embraces 
transformation, transmutation, translation, transfiliation, 
or infilling, and transfusion, or the interblending of ele- 
ments. As applied to the human form, the term covers 
all these principles and more. 

S. Is not the human form, or figure, fixed, or stable? 

T. It is very unstable, every molecule, or element, 
being in rapid movement. As seen by clairvoyant vision, 
it is apparently as unstable as the dissolving and resolving 
views of a kaleidoscope. To transfigure the human form 
is not only to accelerate molecular action, or evolution, 
but also spiritual involution. This is. indicated by a 
change or exaltation of the countenance or features. 

S. Then transfiguration is involution? 

T. It is more than involution. It is evolution. 

S. You mean to sa} T that transfiguration is growth ? 

T. Verily. 

S. Do you mean material growth ? 

T. I mean spiritual growth, since there can be no other. 
Every plant, tree, animal, or man, is both figured and 
transfigured by spirit, or life. The rose is transmuted, or 



30 HINTS ON' METAPHYSICS. 

changed, by inspiration and expiration of cellular sub- 
stance, by transformation, transfiliation, and transfusion, 
as well as migration and transmigration. 

S. Then growth is, itself, simply transfiguration? 

T. What else can it be ? 

S. Then the crab-apple has been transfigured into the 
modern greening, the grasses into grains, and the ape into 
man? 

T. No ; the mind, or life, of the crab and of man cast 
their shadows behind them. The horticulturist has the 
greening on the brain, and the anthropologist, or world- 
spirit, has engrafted man into his own ancestral trunk. 
Man is thus transfigured into a living soul, and feeds on 
the bread of life. 

S. Can humanity live on transfigured bread? 

T. Humanity can live on no other bread. Such is the 
bread for which all men and women are starving. 

S. You mean the Word of God or bread of life ? " 
How does this differ from the baker's bread ? 

T. It differs in longevity. It confers immortal health 
and happiness. It is the bread of the communion. 

S. Do you mean the communion of the saints ? or the 
sinners ? 

T. I mean neither ; for in heaven there are neither 
saints nor sinners. By bread of the communion I mean 
the communion of bread ; that is, its circulation. 

S. And by the circulation you mean the distribution of 
the " bread of life"? 

T. I mean the distribution, not only of the " bread of 
life," but the life of bread. I mean fraternity. I mean 
humanity transfigured. I mean the feeding of the multi- 
tude. 

S. Can this be done on five loaves and two fishes ? 



"transfiguration." 31 

T. It can, if the}^ are blest. 

8. How are they blest? 

T. By multiplication. 

8. You mean an accumulation of riches ? 

T. I mean a rich accumulation. 

8. Well, and how is this effected? 

T. By performing a miracle. 

S. And what is the miracle ? 

T. It is the transfiguration of the body and blood of 
Christ in the bread and wine of the communion. 

8. Well, and what is that communion ? 

T. It is the breaking of baker's bread and the cir- 
culation of the minter's coin among the brethren. 

8. But can the bread and coin be distributed sacrile- 
giously ? 

T. No ; but they can be distributed religiously. 

8. You mean in the name of the Son of God? 

T. I mean in the name of the S<Jh of Man. I mean 
that the silver plate and the wine-cup should be passed 
reverently. 

8. To whom? 

T. To those who earn them. 

8. And who are they? 

T. They are those who bless the single loaf by trans- 
figuration. 

8. You mean by re-production? Then every producer 
is a Christian, and a communicant of the Lord's Supper? 

T. No ; every Christian is a producer and distributer 
of bread. 

8. But what is the difference between common baker's 
bread and the bread of the communion ? 

T. The difference is that one is transfigured and the 
other is not. One is accompanied with dyspepsia, liver- 



32 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

complaint, and the heart-ache, and the other with soul- 
harmony and peace. One is barren of love, justice, and 
truth ; the other is impregnated with these re-productive 
principles, which bring manna from heaven. 

8» Would not your Christian law of increase be an ex- 
cellent substitute for our slow political economy, since it 
would feed the people at once with heavenly loaves ? 

T. There is no substitute for justice. The heavenly 
loaves are earned in heaven, and not in hell. Hence they 
are transfigured; that is, they are genuine "baker's 
loaves." 

8. What can 3-ou mean by genuine baker's loaves in 
such a connection ? What is your evidence that the mul- 
tiplied loaves on which the five thousand were fed were 
produced at a genuine bakery? 

T. My evidence is that they were fed to the people, 
and not to the Scribes and Pharisees. 

8. But whence came the bread? 

T. It came from heaven. 

8. What do you mean by that affirmation? 

T. I mean that every honest loaf of bread is pro- 
duced in heaven, and that Christ fed the people on their 
own earnings. 

8. Then the heavenly manna must be earned in heaven ; 
that is, in a heavenly spirit ; and that is what you mean by 
transfiguration as applied to bread ? 

T. Just so. You are " brightening up," I see. Pur- 
sue your inquiry on that line, and your whole body will be 
full of light. You will then see, with Christ, that the 
Word of God is the bread of life, and that the miracle 
of the loaves and fishes is symbolical of the greater 
miracle of the abolition of poverty, sin, and sickness from 
the face of the earth. 



" TRANSFIGURATION. 33 

S. How do you interpret Christ's transfiguration on 
the mount? Did heaven open so that he was seen with 
Moses and Elias, by the eyes of his disciples? 

T. No ; the eyes of his disciples were opened to see 
the reality of transfiguration. Heaven is always open; 
but our eyes not always. Were our eyes open, we would 
see Moses, and Elias, and the Christ in every man and 
woman. They would become transfigured. We would 
then see the spiritual only, that is, the real in all men, 
and all men in the real, as we must do in "healing." 
We discover that figuration is transfiguration; that the 
natural body is the figuration of the transfiguring spirit- 
ual bod}' ; that the natural world is the phenomenon of 
the spiritual world ; that every new leaf on a growing 
plant or tree is a transfiguration; that the foliage of 
spring, and the fruitage of autumn, are panoramic mira- 
cles, no less than the feeding of the multitude, or the 
resurrection and ascension of Christ. 

S, Do you believe in the resurrection from the dead ? 

T. No ; I believe in the transfiguration of the living. 

S. In other words, you believe in spiritual resurrection ? 

T, There can be no other. Matter cannot rise of its 
own purpose. Spirit only can rise or fall. 

S. Cannot spirit fall, then, into the grave, or be 
annihilated ? 

T. It may part with its grave-clothes, but not with 
itself. 

jS. Then you believe in the ascension of the soul only ? 

T. I believe in the spiritualization, and consequent 
ascension, of both soul and body. 

8. Then you do not believe in the spiritual body, or 
soul, as a separate essence or entity? 

T. There can be no separate entity. All bodies are 
spiritual, both in substance and phenomena. 



34 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

8. Is a diseased body spiritual? 

T. Not by any means. 

S. But is it not a phenomenon? 

T. Not to reason or religion. 

S. How, then, do I see it? 

T. You do not see it, any more than you do a ghost 
when it is not there. 

S. Can I see a dead limb on a tree ? 

T. You cannot see a lifeless limb. 

8. Why, then, do I call it rotten? 

T. Because your logic is rotten. 

8. Then ycu would have me question my eyesight? 

T. No ; I would have you question your insight. 
Your evesight is no more reliable than that of an owl 
sitting in judgment on the daylight. 

S. But is not my eyesight reliable, when I look at a 
sound tree or a healthy human body ? 

T. Not if you lack the insight to see that nothing can 
be sound or healthy out of truth, and that in truth there 
can be neither rottenness nor rheumatism. 

8. But how can we so transcend our finite deceptions 
as to see soundness and health only ? 

T. By transfiguration. By looking at all things spiritu- 
ally. By studying the four points of the compass, as 
indicated on our metaphysical chart. By lifting our eyes 
up to heaven, while we lead our hungering and thirsting 
brothers by the hand into pleasant pathways, and out of 
the wilderness of error. By ascending the mount of clear 
vision, whence all Nature and Providence is translated 
into the language of the eternal life. Thus the whole 
earth is illumined by the light that radiates from the 
loving eyes, and glowing countenances, of ministering 
angels. Thus the heavenly manna is seen to fall upon 
every home and hamlet. 



" TRANSFIGURATION." 35 

JS. Then you regard transfiguration as spiritual illumi- 
nation ? as the radiation of every molecule of the human 
organism by the influx of divine love and truth ? as the 
displacement of the unreal or phenomenal body of man 
by the abiding and eternal life of God in the soul? 
Hence transfiguration is not limited to the human form, 
or to any other form? 

T. By no means. All Nature is translated into a new 
language, through the spiritual understanding. We see 
death and evil nowhere, but everywhere life and immor- 
tality. Our eyes are opened, not on the past or on the 
future, but on the rapt, undying present. We dwell in 
eternity, in the Real. Every sense is alive to the eternal 
forms and verities of the spiritual universe, which is but 
a transfiguration of the " natural." Every tree, or flower, 
or bird, or landscape, or ocean, or vaulted heaven, as 
well as every man or angel, is discovered to live in the 
radiance of the divine life, truth, love, and goodness. 

S. Why do you name those four divine attributes 
rather than others ? 

T. Because I regard them as inclusive of all others ; 
as the four points of the compass of true wisdom. 



36 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 



LESSON VI. 

MAJOR SCALE OF BEING. 

Student. Under the major scale of being joxx include 
" inspiration." What relation has inspiration to " voice- 
culture " ? 

Teacher. No student of Delsarte will question tie 
application of mental science to the culture of the voice, 
and hence to lung-difficulties. But the relation of mental 
science to mental cure, and thence to general health, is 
no more than dimly perceived by teachers of elocution, or 
music-masters, as a class. At our u Highland School of 
Mental Philosophy," the application of metaphysics to 
voice-culture is fully recognized. 

S. What is your definition of inspiration ? 

T. To inspire is to inflow or flow into. The lungs are 
the visible organs of inspiration. The three voices — 
medial, upper, and lower octaves — in music or in oratory, 
represent attitudes of the soul, of which they are the 
objective expression. 

S. What is the subjective import of these attitudes? 

T. The upper voice may be said to represent the 
immortal me (ego) above me ; and the lower voice, the 
mortal (not) me below me ; while the medial voice, in 
focal relation to the whole scale of being, represents the 
metaphysical me (or ego), which is a transfiguration of 
the entire man, body and soul, into the likeness of spirit, 
or real being. 

S. Is the law of vocal attitudes illustrated in litera- 
ture ? 



MAJOR SCALE OF BEING. 37 

T. The lower octaves in literature may be said to eon- 
tain the key-note of " sin, sickness, and death" ; and the 
upper octaves that of the " eternal life." The attitude of 
the " mortal mind," metaphorically speaking, is manifest 
in the despondent wail of literature. In "Clarence's 
Dream " Shakespeare thus represents it : — 

" 0, I have pass'd a miserable night, 
So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, 
That, as I am a Christian, faithful man, 
I would not spend another such a night, 
Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days; 
So full of dismal terror was the time." 

The opposite of this, or the inspiration of the upper 
octave, is well represented in the stirring lines of 
Whittier : — 

' Go ! ring the bells, and fire the guns ; 
And fling the starry banners out ! 
Shout, " FREEDOM ' ! 'till your lisping ones 
Give back again their cradle shout." 

S. By what degree, or tone of music, or oratory, is the 
medial voice expressed? 

T. By the monotone. Under this come all forms of 
impressive, grand, and solemn discourse of Nature, or ad- 
dress to Deity. Our "statement of being " is made in this 
central octave. The sacred Scriptures of all ages furnish 
living examples of the survival of this grand inspirational 
rhythm, which sweeps the under and upper chords of the 
entire scale of harmony. The words of Isaiah, the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, the Books of Hermes, Ossian's 
Address to the Sun, and the writings of Milton and 
Bunyan, are among the soul's records of the monotone. 



38 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

Of modern poems, the Ursa Major, by Henry Ware, Jr., 
is a good illustration : — 

" With what a stately and majestic step, 
That glorious constellation of the north 
Treads its eternal circles, going forth 
Its princely way amongst the stars, in slow 
And silent brightness. Mighty one, all hail ! 
I joy to see thee on thy glowing path, 
Walk like some stout and girded giant, stern, 
Unwearied, resolute ; whose toiling foot 
Disdains to loiter on its destined way." 

S. I suppose you hold that these keys, or attitudes of 
mind and voice, have a direct action upon the secretions 
of the body? 

T. Their action is as inevitable as cause and effect. 
The action of " mortal mind," that is, mind psychologized 
by its " material beliefs," is necessarily depressing to soul 
and body, as manifest in the false appearances of " liver 
complaint," " hypochondria," "insanity," or "kidney 
disease." 

' S. These appearances you hold to be unreal, even 
though the mind thinks otherwise ? 

T. They are not real because the mind (in error) 
thinks so. If any note in the musical scale should say, 
"I am out of tune," the principle of harmony would 
answer, " Then you are out of the scale altogether; for 
one note is as much a rhythmic integer as another." 

JS. But are there no accidents in music? no discords? 

T. Not in the major scale, nor in the minor scale, 
except by supposition. Discords are pure tones of a 
grander rhythm. When the pure tones are discovered to 
be, the " discords " are discovered not to be. 



MAJOR SCALE OF BEING. 39 

S. The inference being that when soul-harmony is dis- 
covered to be, mortal error and disease are discovered not 
to be? 

T. Just so ; the two be's cannot be together. 

S. Then there is no place, even in universal being, for 
mortal error? 

T. Not if the rhythm of universal being is as perfect 
as that of the musical scale. 

S. How do you prove that disease, or discord, is an 
illusion of the human mind? 

T. By proving its non-existence in the divine mind. 

S. When, if ever, can we heal by our human under- 
standing ? 

T. When it corresponds with the divine understanding. 

S. What is the evidence of such a correspondence ? 

T. "Good works." 

S. What is the distinction between our being God and 
being ' ' like unto God " ? 

T. Man has a conception of the divine attributes, Life, 
Love, and Truth, though only in a finite degree. He is 
" like unto God " in this conception. The son is not the 
father, or the daughter the mother, although reflecting 
the likenesses of each. 

S. How do the parental likenesses of the " children of 
men " differ from those of the " children of God " ? 

T. There are no children of men other than the chil- 
dren of God. The children of error (by supposition) may 
inherit the deflected sins and sicknesses of their mortal 
forefathers ; but the children of God can reflect only the 
eternal life, truth, and love of God in their own souls 
and bodies. 

8. What place has fear or scepticism in the mind of a 
child of God? 



40 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. No place. Fear is an animal instinct. 

S. Is there no place for fear as to the action of poison 
in the healthy human organism? 

T. Such an organism is rarely seen by the eye of 
sense. Being spiritual and not animal in genesis, it could 
not be obstructed, in its econonry, by the action of any 
gross chemical. The so-called action of poison is due to 
the soul's ignorance of itself. The action is upon the 
animal-man, who has not yet outgrown his ante-natal 
error. It is possible only on the false supposition of 
inherent evil in matter. 

S. How, then, do you explain the fact that the action 
is the same, though arsenic be taken unconsciously? 

T. All mental action is not conscious. The mind is 
the only sensitive portion of any organism. Otherwise 
the arsenic would not require a living human stomach in 
which to prove its ravages. 

S. To what are its ravages due ? 

T. To transmitted fear, or belief in the reality of the 
poison. 

S. But will it not destroy or injure all the same, 
though we take it in full belief that it will not ? 

T. It may for the reason that full knowledge may be 
necessary. Belief in the ill effect of poison is universal. 
It is in the mental atmosphere we breathe, and Ave have 
not only to neutralize our own personal error in order to 
escape, but the social magnetism of the entire commu- 
nity. Error usurps the place of truth in everybody's 
minds : to wit, that it is the drug that does the mischief. 

S. What else is it? 

T. It is the quality ascribed to the drug. Qualities 
are transmissible because they are mental. Because they 
are mental they are psychological, and the presence of 



MAJOR SCALE OF BEING. 41 

arsenic in the stomach is equivalent to the mental action 
of all the antecedent beliefs of mankind, in its inherent 
enmity to the human constitution. 

8. How about the constitution of the lower animals ? 

T. They are more sensitive to the abnormal action, 
because more in the realm of casuality, and under the 
dominion of fear. The glory of man is that he lives in a 
sphere which logically knows no accident, and hence no 
fear. In the perfect manhood of the race, no drug can 
either kill or cure, for the reason that it has no sensa- 
tion of its own, and beneficent sensations only are then 
ascribed to it by the general mind. 

8. What is the logical effect of the ascription of malev- 
olent or poisonous qualities to persons or things ? 

T. The effect is depressing to the mind, and so inevi- 
tably to the physique. 

8. You mean b} r the physique the physical body. 
What is the spiritual body ? 

T. It is the organism of the soul, as the physical body 
is the organism of the mind of man. It is sometimes 
confounded with the " astral body." This body may be 
assumed at will by " travelling" clairvoyants, or appear 
in the so-called " double," even while yet connected with 
the u natural body," and before the phenomenon of death. 
The " astral body," as distinguished from the more inte- 
rior " spiritual body," is itself subject to the phenomenon 
of death, either simultaneously with the death of the 
"natural body," or subsequently. It is supposed to 
serve as a transition-form for millions of departed souls, 
en route to their real and substantial spheres of being. 
There the " astral spirit" discovers that it has a spiritual, 
that is, an immortal body, as well as soul. 

8. Do you recognize spiritual mediumship ? 



42 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. As a metaphysician, I recognize no other medium- 
ship. So-called " mediumship," so far as it is negative 
to " material beliefs," is a deflection from the truth. But 
these "deflections" are as good testimony to "material- 
ization," as is the general material sense of mankind to 
the reality of the " natural body." 

S. Do you believe in spiritual communications ? 

T. There are no other communications. Our minds 
are unquestionably in the most intimate rapport with the 
world of spirit. When raised in our thoughts to the 
spiritual understanding, we commune with very exalted 
human kindred. Grosser communications have all the 
reality of .the illusions of material sense ; but only as we 
aspire to the " Supreme Good," can we realize our true 
fellowship. Hence our direct appeal to the Infinite Spirit, 
when we would heal, as being nearer to us, in reality, 
than any departed friend can be. 

S. What is obsession ? 

T. It is spiritual illusion. 

S. Then it is not a reality ? 

T. Only psychologically. It is a false phenomenon, 
an abnormal transfiguration, which has only to be discov- 
ered by the subject to be " cast out." 

S. What is real transfiguration, as distinguished from 
obsession ? 

T. The illumination of soul and body by the "Spirit 
of Truth." This is also the true resurrection, the spiritu- 
alization of the body. 

■S. Then you believe in spiritualization, if not in 
" materialization" ? 

T. I believe in both. In other words, I believe in 
substance and shadow. 

8. Then you accept ' ' materialization " as a truth ? 






MAJOR SCALE OF BEING. 43 

T. I accept it as a phenomenon. As metaphysicians, 
we declare that the body is but the shadow of the soul. 
When " Spiritualism " proves the truth of our declaration, 
by its materialization and de-materialization before our 
eyes, it is with very ill-grace that we deny the fact, 
though we dispute the philosophy, that is, the belief of 
spirituality in shadow. 

S. Where is the spirituality ? 

T. In substance. 

S* And what is substance? 

T. Infinite spirit. 

S. Cannot finite spirits communicate ? 

T. Only through rapport with the infinite. 

S. How, then, can there be any evil communications ? 

T. There cannot be, in reality ; only communications 
from " evil" believers to believers in " evil." 

S. What, then, is the mistake of " Spiritualism "? or 
rather, of "Spiritism"? 

T. The same as that of false " Christianity" ; a belief 
in the self-sovereignty of finite spirits, or their power to 
do evil in presence of the Infinite. It is the old miscon- 
ception of " evil " as a personified entity. It is the sub- 
stitution of matter for soul-substance ; of mortal error for 
immortal truth ; of the minor for the major scale of 
being. 

S. In the major scale of being, as in your first lesson, 
you hold that the mind can ' ; observe nothing exterior to 
itself." Hence all disease must be in the mind if any- 
where. But the doubt comes in, in the public estima- 
tion, when all disease is declared to be a "myth." Is 
the myth in the mind ? 

T. It can be nowhere else. The myth is the disease. 

S. But allowing that "as a man thinketh, so is he," 



44 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

the objector will ask how a cancer or tumor should grow 
for t years, though the mind never thinks of it, until some 
physician ma} T have discovered and announced its exist- 
ence? Now, if disease is in the mind, why does one 
take a cold, or a malarial fever, though ignorant of any 
exposure ? 

T. All mental action is not conscious, as aIread} T 
stated. Not every touch of the finger of the pianist is 
recognized, though actually felt and reported to the mind. 
So our material beliefs, taken on from our ignorant or 
ante-natal ancestry, as well as from the mental malaria of 
our present surroundings, are not necessarily recognized 
at the moment of their action. 

iS. What is material belief ? 

T. Belief in the power of matter over mind. 

S. What is mental malaria ? 

T. It is the atmosphere of error, or belief in the exist- 
ence of physical evil. 

S. What application has mind-cure to this belief ? 

T. It declares it to be untrue in the nature of things. 

S. What do we mean by the nature of things ? 

T. The divine nature, which excludes the possibility 
of disease as an entity. 

S. To what is the unconscious growth of internal 
tumor, or cancer, attributable? 

T. To the action of unconscious mind in error. 

S. How is the mind in unconscious error corrected? 

T. By the mind in conscious truth. By the inspired 
mind, which knows no pain or danger. 

S. What demonstrations have we of the power of 
mind to neutralize pain or danger? 

T. The example of the martyr at the stake, or the 
soldier in battle. Or, better, the Scripture records of 






MAJOR SCALE OF BEING. 45 

prophets entering the lion's den, or passing through the 
fiery furnace, physically uninjured. 

S* What is your opinion of the c ' Laying on of 
Hands"? 

T. The keys of life are perfect ; but the hand that 
sweeps over them is progressive. In it are the poles of 
all forms of physical and executive force, from the lowest 
zoophites, with their primal feelers, to the magnificent 
gestures of Cicero, or the musical oratorios of Mozart or 
Beethoven. The scientists say that the hand was devel- 
oped from the lower animal ; but we aver that it was 
developed by the higher animal, — the spiritual man. 

Go back a hundred thousand years, and look for the 
human hand. You do not find it, but only its germinal 
prophecy. Tracing it through the carnivorous eras, we find 
it to be a symbol of strength. But what kind of strength, as 
compared with the hand of man ? The forearm of the tiger 
or bear is extended to destroy or strike down. But I ex- 
tend my hand, or you yours, in friendship. The forearm 
of power has now become reciprocal. We " shake hands," 
and a beneficent current is formed. This is "animal 
magnetism." If my hand is cold, 3-ours will seem warm 
to me, or vice versa. The whole question of " laying on 
of hands" in healing rests upon our benevolence of pur- 
pose, or upon the nature of the influence which moves 
the hand. If it be " animal" magnetism, merely, it is 
illegitimate in metaphysical practice. 

Jesus often laid hands upon the sick, and healed them. 
But it was not the hand that healed. It was the moral 
goodness that was resident in the soul. So far as hands 
were concerned, everybody in Judea had them ; but not 
everybody had the divine wisdom which constitutes spirit- 
ual magnetism. 



46 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

The hand, as well as the whole body, metaphysically, 
is but a shadow of the mind. But in the focus of the 
mind, the hand is the lever of the mechanic, the persua- 
sion of the orator, or the magic wand of the healer. It 
is the magnet of the psychologist, who may be himself 
psychologized. We are all psychologized by "disease," 
which is no more real than the belief of a mesmerized 
subject, who may be made to think he is in London, 
when he is in New York. Living, in truth, where alone 
we can live, we are made to believe in error, when a 
fictitious phenomenon like consumption, or dropsy, is 
accepted as a reality. The hand of God, surely, is not 
in this ; nor is the hand of the son of man, though we 
may swear, by all our ancestors, that we see a dragon in 
the sky, when we only see a caricature of ourselves. 
The divine hand sweeps only the major scale of being. 



RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 47 



LESSON VII. 

RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 

Student, What are some of the metaphysical ideas of 
the older philosophers, in reference to God and the human 
soul? For instance, what was the ancient Hindoo state- 
ment of being ? 

Teacher, In the Vedas, or Hindoo Scriptures, probably 
written five hundred years before Moses, we learn that 
Brehm was an omnipresent God : that the Trimurti, or 
Hindoo Trinity, were Brahma, the Creator ; Vishnu, the 
Preserver ; and Siva, the Destroyer. Among the emblems 
of the destroyer was that of a new-born infant, suggest- 
ing that life is continually reproduced from death. 

The Trimurti was regarded rather as three personifica- 
tions of the one infinite "Brehm," than as distinct or sep- 
arate deities. Brehm was the only self-existent, pure, 
perfect, omniscient, and omnipresent being. " No vision 
could approach him ; no language describe him ; no intel- 
lectual power could comprehend him. The sun, and all 
the universes, borrowed their light from him. The wise 
called him the Great, Supreme, All-pervading Spirit." 

Some of the Hindoo writers apprehended the meta- 
physical law we are considering. They declare, in the 
Vedas, that we "must consider mountains, oceans, etc., 
as illusions of the apprehension. When knowledge is 
pure, that is, real, or universal, the varieties of substance 
cease to exist in matter. For what is matter?" they ask. 
" Where is the thing that is devoid of beginning, middle, 



48 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

and end, and of one uniform nature? How can reality 
be predicated of that which is subject to change, and 
which reassumes no more its original character ? " 

8. What is the Persian statement of being? 

T. In the Zendavesta, — a term from " Zend," or 
" Living," and " Vesta," or "Word," — we learn the 
existence of one great incomprehensible being, from 
whom proceed Ormuzd, the creator of all good, and 
Ahriman, the author of evil. Six thousand vears ago, 
according to Plato, we read in the " Living Word" : " I 
address my prayer to Ormuzd, creator of all things, who 
always has been, who is, and who will be forever; who is 
wise and powerful ; who made the great arch of heaven, 
the sun, moon, stars, winds, water, earth, animals, metals, 
and men ; and whom Zoroaster adored." 

S. Has not modern astronomy enlarged Zoroaster's 
conception of the u great arch of heaven"? 

T. That is the office of the telescope, as applied to 
discoveries of material creation. But if there were a 
64 spiritual " creation, subtending or antedating the "■ ma- 
terial," as suggested in the " Book of Genesis," " modern 
astronomy" is a limitation, and not an enlargement, of 
the " arch of heaven." 

S. Then we conceited moderns are liable, as we in- 
crease in wisdom, to be brought face to face, not only 
with the " lost arts," but with the lost sciences? 

T. There is, at least, some danger of our discovering 
that the " dead past" was more alive than the " living 
present " ; and that the allegory of the "Garden of Eden " 
was not written by a dreamer, but by a philosopher. 

S. What is the Egyptian statement of being? 

T. The sacred Scriptures of the Egpytians, dating back 
before the age of Moses, affirm, according to the " Books 



RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 49 

of Hermes," the being of one Infinite God. " Before all 
things that essentially exist, and before the principles of 
all things, there existed one God, immovable in the soli- 
tude of his unity. He is self-begotten, and the only 
Father who is truly good. He is the fountain of all 
things, the root of all primary existing forms. He is the 
Invisible One, who is worshipped in silence." 

S. What is the significance of the expression, " wor- 
shipped in silence " ? 

T. It is of metaphysical import ; a recognition of the 
supreme reality of the spiritual heavens. It is our key to 
the healing of the sick, the opening of the inward ear to 
the u still small voice" of Truth. " As for me," said 
Confucius, the Chinese sage, " I would never speak more : 
heaven speaks." 

S. Had the early Greeks a written statement of being ? 

T. Orpheus, twelve hundred years before Jesus, says : 
" There is one Unknown Being, prior to all beings, and 
exalted above all. He is Life, Counsel, and Light ; the 
One Power who drew all things, visible and invisible, out 
of nothing. The Empyrean, the deep Tartarus, the 
earth, the ocean, the immortal gods and goddesses, — all 
that is, all that has been, and all that will be, — was 
originally contained in the fruitful bosom of Jupiter. He 
is the Primeval Father, the Immortal Virgin, the Life, the 
Cause, the Energy of all things." 

S. What are some of the miscellaneous statements of 
theists and thinkers, outside of the collected Scriptures 
of different ages ? 

T. Pythagoras, six hundred years before Christ, said : 
" There is one Universal Soul diffused through all things ; 
eternal,' invisible, unchangeable ; in essence like truth ; in 
substance resembling light ; to be comprehended only by 
the mind." 



50 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

"The universe," said Plato four hundred and twenty- 
nine years before Christ, "belongs to Deity. He is the 
Shepherd of mankind, who provides for all things. He 
is the Architect of the world, the Father of the universe, 
the Creator of Nature, the Sovereign Beauty, and the 
Supreme Good." 

According to Socrates, who was Plato's teacher, "hap- 
piness consists in the right view of things " ; a statement 
which illustrates the metaphysics of health, which is 
essential to happiness. If health comes of the right view 
of things, disease must come of the wrong view of things. 
Hence, as Socrates declares, "The study of physics is 
worthless, unless we find the spiritual source of all 
science." 

Zeno, four hundred and ninety years before Christ, 
affirmed the same philosophy, which was also declared by 
Zenophanes a century earlier, that " the senses do not 
represent truth" ; that our " experiences give us appear- 
ances only" ; and that the true existence* must be eternal. 
" Endless being, the only reality, apprehended by pure 
reason," he asserts, " must always be clearly distinguished 
from the objects of sense." 

" The soul is not a mere harmony of the body," said 
Aristotle ; " it is a simple spiritual essence. The soul is 
immortal"; and "man's highest good is found in his 
resemblance to the Summum bonum" or Sum of all Good. 
" Love is the soul's longing for unity with the Beautiful 
Beauty," says this philosopher, " is spiritual," and de- 
rived not from matter, but " from the soul. Thence it is 
reflected in the body, and in the arts and sciences." 
" Substance, or God, is that which is in no other, but in 
which all other is." 

S. What are some of the views of the " Christian 
Fathers"? 



RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 51 

T. Athenasius declared that to deny God is to deny 
the soul, and vice versa. " Soul is radically different from 
the body. It knows what sense does not reveal. It 
thinks and loves the unchangeable and immortal. Hence 
it is itself immortal." 

St. Augustine says : " Authority precedes science, which 
cannot go so far as faith. Even in doubt is knowledge of 
existence. " Hence, our spirit must be united mysteriously 
with the unchangeable truth. We know the truth by par- 
ticipation in it. We know the good by participation in 
the Unchangeable Good, or God. 

According to Theodosius, we penetrate truth more per- 
fectly, the further we withdraw from the merely sensu- 
ous. "The body is mutable ; reason is immutable. Truth 
is in the soul, so far as it is recognized and known. 
Hence, immortality of soul. Evil is not of soul-sub- 
stance. Evil is no substance ; that is, no good. Evil is 
only possible through the good. A being purely evil is 
simply non-being." # 

Other writers, subsequent to the early " Fathers," affirm 
the essential supremacy of spirit. Descartes declares 
that the ego is known as distinct from the body. We 
can think away body, but not " ego." Hence, our pure 
knowledge of the spirituality of the soul. "Ideas of 
infinite, perfect being, are known by the ego, jet not 
originated by it. These ideas are above the limited soul, 
implying all fulness of reality, among which is objective 
existence." 

Spinosa says: "The primal principle of substance is 
mind, force, which are one substance, equalling being, 
equalling God. Neither body nor soul are substance 
per se; but modes or affections of the divine attributes." 

Leibnitz affirms that ' ' the soul has no window through 



52 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

which sensible objects can enter. Bodies are aggregates 
of monads, which are not atoms, but simple elements, 
imperishable and unchangeable, and analogous to the 
human soul. Therefore, human nature is to be consid- 
ered in the light of monadolog}', the soul of man being in 
the highest grade of monads ; that is, possessing intelli- 
gence and will." 

Soul-monads come to consciousness, and are no longer 
" naked monads." Others " lapse to lower grades, from 
whence thej T came, and so are not immortal." 

S. How does that statement agree with your affirma- 
tion that to be at all, is to be immortal? 

T. To be immortal, and to be conscious of immor- 
tality, are not identical states of being. If the " monad" 
be "imperishable," as this writer declares, its "naked- 
ness" cannot deprive it of "being." It only lacks its 
consciousness of immortality in God, who, according to 
Leibnitz, is u the monad of monads." 

Hume affiyxied that ' c belief in future existence rests 
on our propensity to feign continued existence." On 
what the "propensity" itself rests, he does not tell us. 
But if the ultimate " monad" of Leibnitz, or the " germ 
cell," or "protoplasm" of later writers, be imperisha- 
ble, as " elements," how could their primal nakedness be 
" clothed upon '*■' at all but with " immortality " ? 

According to Hegel, "In man, nature becomes self- 
conscious. The ego, from its otherness, becomes con- 
scious of itself." 

S. I suppose you would describe that \ ' otherness " as 
the me below me and the me above me ? 

T. Such is not my complete statement of- what may be 
called the triangular me. The three " me's" may be said 
to represent the subjective, objective, and ejective uni- 



RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 53 

verses, or cosmos. The objective, or outer world, is the 
finite me below me, since it can be known only in my 
consciousness ; that is, subjectively. But of the ejec- 
tive world, or not-me, I am conscious only through the 
reflected consciousness of the spiritual me above me. 
Hence, " Thou shalthave no other gods before Me," is a 
metaphysical declaration of the Infinite Me that all other 
"me's" are " ejects," that is, not-me's. This Supreme 
Me is what may be called our divine " otherness," as dis- 
tinguished from Hegel's "otherness" of Nature. The 
object, or matter, is known only by efflux ; the eject, or 
spirit, only by influx. 

Jacobi says: "Sensations are not caused by phe- 
nomena. They are in the mind. Neither by things in 
themselves, since cause and effect belong to phenomena." 

Schopenhauer declares: " The world is not the best, 
but the worst possible. Existence is perpetual suffering. 
It must cease to affirm itself in order to escape." 

Rather, "existence" must cease to affirm its not-self, 
that is, evil, error, sin, and death, in order to escape suf- 
fering. u Conscious of our identity with the universal 
will," says Schopenhauer, " we sympathize with suffering." 

Rather, conscious of such identity, we abolish suffer- 
ing. 

S. Was it not the assumed reality of evil, or suffering, 
which impelled John Stuart Mill to say that "reason 
finds evidence of the existence of a being in nature of 
great but limited power " ? 

T. Undoubtedly that was his difficulty. All-powerful 
good cannot logically co-exist with the admitted reality 
of evil. 

S. What is Herbert Spencer's conclusion relative to 
the divine existence ? 



54 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. He regards the absolute as ' c unthinkable ; though 
there is an ultimate a?, or reality, in which subjective and 
objective coincide. Our conception of this, though posi- 
tive, is indefinite." 

Comte affirms that we know nothing but phenomena. 
"As the mind is evolved, so is knowledge." But 
whether ""evolved" mind has a mental antecedent as 
inevitable as evolved matter, its material antecedent, is 
not determined by "Positive Philosophy." Genesis of 
mind, however, is a primal, metaphysical truth. Heredity 
is of the soul, of which the body is the phenomenon. 

8. What is the Berkeleyan statement of being ? 

T. George Berkeley, about one hundred and seventy 
years since, boldly announced, in his "Principles of 
Human Knowledge" the non-existence of matter, other 
than in mental perception. " For what," he asks, "are 
external objects, as trees, houses, etc., but the things we 
perceive by sense? And what do we perceive besides 
our own ideas, or sensations? And is it not plainly 
repugnant that any one of these should exist unper- 
ceived ? " 

If matter is not perceived by me, or any finite spirit, 
he argues, it must be perceived, if it have any being 
at all, by Infinite Spirit. But such spirit is limitless. 
Hence, " there can be no other substance than spirit 
itself, or that which perceives." In other words, matter, 
as distinguished from mind, or spirit, is not substance, 
and can have no separate being. 

" How matter should operate on a spirit, or produce an 
idea in it," says Berkeley, " is what no philosopher will 
attempt to explain. It is therefore evident that there 
can be no use for matter in natural philosophy." 

8. What is the so-called Quimby and Eddy theory as 
applied to healing ? 



RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 55 

T. The pivotal principle by which they have cured 
disease is the " understanding of God," or Christ, and 
which has been called " Christian," or " divine science." 

This " divine science," or understanding, displaces or 
falsifies all human understanding, or wisdom, in reference 
to health or disease ; demonstrating that our material 
senses are deceptive witnesses of truth. The assumed 
reality of the material world, inclusive of our bodies, 
is disproved by the counter-reality of the spiritual, in 
which there can be no death, sin, or sickness. 

The students, or teachers of this school all agree, as I 
apprehend, in accepting the pivotal law, or divine under- 
standing, but differ as to what that understanding is. As 
these differences have involved personal crimination and 
re- crimination, I regard them as outside of pure meta- 
physics. 

8. What is Dr. W. F. Evans's philosophy? 

T. That is best answered in his works, which antedate 
all others on the " Mind Cure." His method is oriental, 
of which his last work, " Primitive Mind Cure," is an 
advanced and able exposition. 

S. What is your view of "Theosophy" and "Adept- 
ship"? 

T. They open the road to great power over evils, or 
evil-spirits. But the wand of power is not strictly of a 
metaphysical genesis, which knows no evil to control. 
Adepts, like rope-dancers, accomplish miracles of 
achievement, but on a higher plane of discipline. 

S. The Hindoo Fakirs lacerate and heal themselves, 
or leave and re-enter their bodies at will. 

T. And what of it? A great feat, indeed; but what 
relation has it to general health, or social progress ? 

S. Wherein does your "Mental Philosophy" differ 
from that of other metaphysicians ? 



56 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

T. The difference, so far as it exists, is best seen by a 
statement of my own principles and methods. This I 
have already made, in part, in our preceding lessons, 
especially on "Transfiguration," as applied to social as 
well as individual maladies. 

S. Then you are a doctor of the social state ? 

T. I am not a doctor of anything. I am a teacher, 
and like you, a student also. The term u doctor " is an im- 
pertinence in our higher ether ; as if there were anything 
to doctor. A pupil at the blackboard is not told how to 
doctor an angle or a circle in mensuration. Even the 
term " Mind Cure" is ruled out of this school-room, as 
we may endeavor clearly to illustrate in a more advanced 
series of lessons under " Hints on Physics." 

IS. In which I hope the fundamental question will be 
answered : ' ' Do you deny phenomena ? " 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. • 0? 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 

LESSON I. STATEMENT OF BEING. 

Page 1. 

1 . What is being ? 

2. What is the basis of? Matter? or Spirit? 

3. Science of? Physical? Metaphysical? 

4. Evidence of? 

5. Inseparable manifestations of? 

6. Forms of? 

7. Soul-reflection of? 

8. Substance and shadow of? 

9. Unity and duality of? 

10. Attributes of? 

11. Concepts of? 

12. Complete and logical statement of? 

LESSON II. — GENESIS OF BEING. 

Page 7. 

1. Is man born of matter? 

2. Has the life of man an origin? 

3. Of what is his life a reflection? 

4. Is death a deflection? 

5. Are moral diseases deflections? 

6. Were they ever generated? 

7. Are they real to man as spirit? 

8. When do we enter eternity? 

9. Is man the " second man"? 



58 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

10. Is the animal the u coming man"? 

11. Have species an origin? 

12. Is the human mind held in solution? 

13. What is the realm of "mystery "? 

14. Does the growth, as well as generation of species, lie 

in the divine substance? 



LESSON III. REFLECTION OF BEING. r 

Page 14. 

1. What constitutes a mirror? 

2. Can any mirror distort the features of truth? 

3. What is the right focal relation? 

4. Is the human body a mirror? Mind? 

5 . What is substance ? Reflection of ? Deflection ? 

6. Does " sub-stand" pertain to physics? 

7. What general terms express the relation of substance 

and shadow? 

8. Is the soul substance? or shadow? 

9. Is it free to disobey God? 

10. Can it realize other than its true likeness? 

11. How is the visual sense deceived in regard to it? 

(See Metaphysical Chart.) 

12. What is the " finite " vs. the u infinite " ray? 

13. Whence is illusion, or how mistaken for reality? 

14. Can we affirm what we cannot think? 

15. Is death thinkable? 

16. How does metaphysics apply to social problems? 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 59 



LESSON IV. — GENESIS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

Page 21. 

1. Is knowledge relative? Absolute? 

2. What are the conditions of each? 

3. What is shadow and perspective? Domain of? 

4. Terra firma of physical science ? Spiritual? 

5. Whence the sunbeams of our nativity? 

6. Of the "new birth"? 

7. Whence the magician's wand of cure? Did Jesus 

employ it ? 

8. Pure reason leads to the discovery of — what? 

9 . Is the materialist a reliable witness ? Spiritualist ? 

10. Who is the blasphemer? Hypocrite? 

11. To know at all is to know — what? 

12. To be at all is to be — what? 

13. What is the logical use of physics? Metaphysics? 

Misuse of each ? 

14. What is the first step in real knowledge? • 

15. Can there be knowledge of any life except — what? 

Any love, truth, good except — what? 



LESSON V. — u TRANSFIGURATION." 

Page 29. 

1. What is transfiguration? 

2. How applied to the human form? 

3. Is the human form stable? 

4. What is molecular action ? Evolution? Involution? 

5 . What is growth ? How illustrated ? 

6. How does man become a living soul? 

7. Can he live on transfigured bread? 



60 HINTS ON METAPHYSICS. 

8. How does such bread differ from baker's bread? 

9. Or, how is Christ's miracle of the " loaves and 

fishes " related to our slow political economy ? 

10. What is the great miracle? 

11. How was Christ transfigured? Was he raised from 

the dead? 

12. Are soul and form inseparable? 

13. Can we see a diseased form of man? 

14. How can we see life and health only? 

15. What is figuration vs. transfiguration? 



LESSON VI. MAJOR SCALE OE BEING. 

Page 36. 

1. What is inspiration? 

2. Organs, octaves, subjective and objective import of? 

3. What is the metaphysical "me"? Illustrated? 

4. What action have vocal attitudes on "secretions"? 

5. Are there discords in the major scale? 

6. Can we prove that discord is a mental illusion? 

7. When do we heal by our human understanding? 

8. What action has poison in a healthy organism? 

9. Is such an organism perceptible to material sense? 

10. To what is the action of poison due? 

11. What is neutralized before it ceases to be u deadly " ? 

12. Whence its qualities? 

13. What is the logical effect of ascription of malevolent 

qualities to persons or things? 

14. What is mediumship ? Obsession? 

15. What is materialization ? Spiritualization ? 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 61 



LESSON VII. RETROSPECTIVE VIEWS. 

Page 47. 

1. What is the Hindoo statement of being? 

2. The Persian? 

Si Has modern astronomy enlarged Zoroaster's great 
" arch of heaven " ? 

4. What is the Egyptian statement of being? 

5. Import of phrase of Hermes, u Worship in silence " ? 

6. Had the early Greeks a written statement of being? 

From Orpheus ? At what era ? 

7. What said Pythagoras? Socrates, Plato, Zeno? 

8. Who said the soul is not a mere harmony of the 

body ? 

9. Views of " Christian Fathers." Augustine, The- 

odosius, said — what? 

10. Writers subsequently. Descartes, Leibnitz? 

11. Nature becomes self-conscious according to — whom? 

12. Hegel's "otherness" related to the triangular cos- 
mos — how ? ♦ 

13. Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Schopenhauer — what? 

14. Existence of being of great, but limited power, af- 
firmed by — whom ? On what premises ? 

15. How compared with Herbert Spencer's view? 

16. Comte says we know nothing but — what? 

17. What is the Berkeleyan statement of being? 

18. The Evans School? 

19. The " Christian Scientist's "? 

20. School of " Theosophy " ? 

21. The Highland School?' 



Paet II. 

HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTUKES. 

THE VERB "TO BE." 

FIRST CONJUGATION. 

The statement of being lies at the basis of all science. 
Hence, the " Conjugation of the Verb 'To Be ' " will 
neither disprove the science of physics nor of metaphysics. 

" To be, or not to be, — that is the question." A question, 
however, of minor importance, if to be were only such a 
so-called being as we realize to-day ; but a question of 
very great importance, if we include in the term the pos- 
sibilities of being. 

The being of a plant, implanted, is practically no 
being. It may as well not be. But planted, and set on 
the line of growth, the being of a plant is being. 

So, if the comparison holds, to be, or not to be, with 
us, is simply a question as to whether, or not, we grow — 
not as matter, but as mind. For we hold that we have a 
being, by spiritual genesis, that we do not know, just as 
the plant may be said to have a being in the seed which it 
has not yet realized. 

Now, this possibility of being is the important ques- 
tion. It is the index finger of metaphysics, pointing to 
what our being really is, in the spirit, or the germinal soil 
in which alone the soul can grow. The actual and the 



64 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

possible are one in principle. The rose- is in the seed. 
But the actual — what we call the actual — is just that 
degree of growth to which the germ has already arrived, 
whether it be the opening bud, or stalk, or leaf and fruit. 

But, unlike the plant, our possibilities lie in all direc- 
tions. They are indeed infinite, because they are spirit- 
ual. In the direction of intelligence, a man's being is 
limited only by his mental grasp of the universe. Poeti- 
cally, or in the direction of imagination, a man's being, 
that is, his actual experience, is measured by his ability 
to apprehend the real rhythm of existence, which no 
finite imagination can over-draw. In the general direc- 
tion of what we call the higher sentiments, as of religion 
and justice, our being acquires a poise and power, limited 
only by our apprehension, or rather, m/s-apprehension, of 
the being and attributes of God. To the limited appre- 
hension of our being in God, or of our spiritual genesis, 
is due all our discordances of body or soul. These all 
come through our awkward attempts to conjugate the 
verb "To Be." 

In the conjugation of being, we make the statement, 
"lam; thou art; he, she, or »£, is." But the "it" is 
an interloper. It has no being of its self; but is an 
impersonal pronoun. It cannot say, "Jam." 

Again, departing from the present tense, which is the 
metaphysical tense, we say, "I was; thou wast; he was" 
We borrow from the past, in that case, to enrich the present. 

Or, on the other hand, we look to the future, and say, 
" I shall be ; thou shalt be ; he, or she, shall be " ; there 
being no " It shall be " in any living language. " It " is 
dead. So is " shall," and " was" ; for whether we bor- 
row from the past, or loan to the future, we deplete the 
present, and so land in the poor-house — spiritually. 



THE VERB " TO BE. 65 

The metaphysical being is the " I am." The u I am" 
includes the past and the future, just as the sun's being- 
embraces the whole extent of his radiation. We cannot 
live in the past, or the future, because the present, being 
full, embraces all the " I am" there is. We cannot loan 
to the future, since at the time we proffer our loan, there 
is no future to loan to. Neither can we take from the 
past, since the "I am" has already covered that realm 
of nonentity. Only in the poverty of the present do we 
clutch for the "I was" or the "I shall be." Every 
sound sail-boat contains its own " fore and aft." In our 
riches we are both fore and heretofore. Like the elderly 
lady who owned her gold spectacles, we need "neither 
borrow nor lend." 

Observe, that the philosophy we are affirming is the 
essential supremacy of the " /am"; a supremacy in the 
sense of divine possibility ; for only so far as we can 
know or be the divine " I am," can we know or be any 
thing. 

-Who, then, are we, who say, " I am"? Can a rock 
say "I am"? Can a tree say it, in the sense in which 
we say it? And how much of an "I am" can we say? 
The present tense of the verb "To Be," with the little 
child, is limited to its range of the dooryard. Its geog- 
raphy of the heavens is measured by its infantile attempt 
to grasp the moon or stars. Nor is the scientist's geog- 
raphy of the heavens more than the dooryard of his own 
being. The dooryard is "material," you say; but the 
knowledge of it is spiritual. It can only be conjugated 
by the child, or the scientist, as symbolical of the yet 
undiscovered landscape of their own existence. Hence, 
the greater the landscape, the greater the being ; and the 
objection of some religionists that the study of natural 



66 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

sciences is necessarily unspiritual, is based on a dogma of 
spirituality that will not tally with the verb " To Be." 
It implies that the works of God are unspiritual ; that 
the faculties employed in their discovery and acquain- 
tance are perverted to unhallowed uses. As if the foun- 
dation of all rational religion did not consist in our 
personal knowledge of God's works. 

The expression in the Persian Bible, "I address my 
prayer to Ormuzd, Creator of all things, " is truly spiritual 
only in proportion to the extent of the author's meaning 
of the words " all things" So, the expression of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, " The Lord said unto Moses," can 
embrace no more religious authority than is represented 
in the prophet's conception of the term " Lord." Before 
science had enlarged the field of human knowledge, 
Jehovah was king only of the Jews. But as the door- 
yard of knowledge increases, the religious sentiments 
enlarge their borders. The mind that once saw authority, 
or sense, in the words, " The Lord is a consuming fire," 
may now recognize a grander sense of the verb " To Be " 
in the words of a modern writer, when he says, " God 
geometrizes." 

That the divine geometry of being immensely transcends 
the divine wrath may be seen by the study of the angles 
and circles of the Deity's own thought, as manifest in the 
mathematical successions, distances, and attractions of 
the planetary and solar worlds. The scientific professor 
draws his geometric figures on the blackboard ; his circle, 
sphere, section, or angle. But this is a mere imitation of 
the subjective or invisible mechanism of being — wherein 
lie all the original lines and surfaces — God's own stupen- 
dous plan of mensuration, outreachiug to infinity. 

Man geometrizes when he studies the nature, or meas- 






THE VERB u TO BE." 67 

ures the extent of surfaces : by knowing the length of 
two sides of the triangle he may calculate the third, and 
ascertain its area. But God geometrizes when, in obedi- 
ence to the chemical law of proportion, or crystallization, 
he moulds the worlds into revolving spheres, or casts the 
granite rocks, or polar ice-mountains, into definite pris- 
matic forms. 

Man geometrizes when he builds the bridge, or lines a 
continent with railroads ; but God geometrizes when he 
arches the world with his rainbow, or spangles the heavens 
with his "Milky Way." Newton geometrized when he 
estimated the properties of spheres and their magnitudes ; 
but God geometrizes when he hangs the Ursu Major or 
Cassiopea in the arch of heaven, and graduates them by 
the genesis of His Infinite Thought. 

Now, if we do not geometrize in the direction of God's 
thought ; if we have not grown out of the limitations of 
our material sense, or rather, non-sense, what is tjie ex- 
tent of our " I am " ? How large is our dooryard? How 
much spirituality have we ? How much do we know of 
life? of love? of truth? of goodness? that is, of God? 
Do we believe in Divine Providence ? Or, are we cowards, 
and afraid of death?. Do we live full and square lives? 
or, are we dodgers? Do we drink in the life of Nature, 
or do we stint ourselves, and breathe less and less, until we 
reach the graveyard, where we belong — in our ignorance? 
How much more immortal are the angels or the gods than 
we, if they do not know any more? or breathe any larger? 
or if they aflirrn the reality of death and the grave? 
Being is not local. Locality, in heaven or earth, is not 
immortality. Immortality consists in the i" am; in the 
sum of our experiences ; in what we think. As the 
ancient Buddhist declares: "All we are is the result 



68 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts ; 
it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks, or acts, 
with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow 
that never leaves him." 

If, then, the basis of all real being lies snugly coiled 
up in a " pure thought," it is obvious that to state what 
it is to be, is to be what we state. It is said that when 
Webster had stated his case to the jury, he had won it. 
But stating a "case," and having a case to state, are 
not identical propositions. Nor is stating a case to a jury, 
and having a jury to state a case to, identical. 

When a student of law and forensic oratory, the 
speaker was accustomed to go into the fields or woods to 
practise, addressing trees or stumps for an audience ; 
but he observed, that, under such circumstances, he was 
compelled to furnish brains for both parties, — a pitiful 
situation for a "stump orator." We are* aware that 
Lorenzo Dow used to say, that if a man knew anything, 
he could state it. But we are inclined to think that there 
was a link left out in Lorenzo's logic. Otherwise, there 
should be no misunderstanding between a wise man and 
his times. In that case the great preacher could repeat 
his appointment from a stump, that in four years he would 
again meet his " dj'ing congregation " — the stumps. 

But in addressing a " living congregation," the meta- 
physican is not only called to " be" before he can say 
" I am," but to declare, despite appearances, to a con- 
sumptive, disconsolate, and woe-begone generation, 
" Thou art." If he comprehends spirit, and his spirit is 
comprehended, the complete conjugation of the verb 
u To Be" can be made. For if we comprehend spirit, 
we can state it, and state it logically, as God states 
the universe. But it requires ears, eyes, and insight, on 



THE VERB " TO BE." 60 

the part of the jury. God, being spirit, states his being, 
in all its transparent, grand, and harmonious evolutions. 
As we grasp that statement, we are led away from the 
graveyard of scepticism and mental stupidity, and up the 
mount of clear vision. 

The verb " To Be" is the centre of all language. 
Yonder is a growing tree — an active verb — a declaration 
of life, out of which comes the entire language of the tree, 
— its root, stem, branches, and fruitage ; all its names, — 
adjectives, adverbs, and connectives. Without the verb, 
the noun and the pronoun are impossible entities. Yet 
we have so-called scientists who aver the being of unvital- 
ized matter ; as if anything could be at all, and not be 
vital. The mind or life of the tree develops the lan- 
guage of the tree. The life of God develops the language 
of Nature. 

Now I have asked, " If a rock says C I am,' what 
shall we infer? Is there not a rock?" But if the rock 
does not say "I am," then is there a rock? Which 
dilemma will the physicist choose? Or can the rock, like 
himself, both affirm and deny its own being ? Is it not 
man, or spirit, who says "I am." Or, can anything 
not man or spirit say, "I am"? If not, then what is 
the rock but spirit, if it be anything? You say that its 
molecules are in motion. Is this accomplished by their 
own volition ? or do they perform their gyrations entirely 
independent of the verb "To Be," active or transitive? 
That is, independent of mind, or a principle of life? 
We should say not ; that only through the verb " To Be " 
does the noun " rock" become a possibility. 

Hence, we have spoken of the universe as the language 
of being. But the universe is spiritual. It is a living, 
and not a dead language. A dead language is no Ian- 



70 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES, 

guage. The scientist may plant a kernel of corn, or a 
bean, and say it dies. But to plant beans is not to know 
beans. To know a plant is to know its vital genesis. 
The kernel of corn is not an atheist. It disappears only 
to reappear. It says, "I have power to lay down my 
life, and I have power to take it up again/' How much 
more can the Son of Man say this ? 

To know man physically only is not to know him. 
Man is spirit, and to know him is to know his spiritual 
genesis ; yea, his divine possibilities. You say man is 
not the Son of God, but of man. Well, who is the Son 
of Man? Is he born of matter? " His life, that is, his 
being, is in the blood," says the mole-eyed philosopher. 
But what is the blood? Blood to-day was not blood yes- 
terday ; nor is it blood to-morrow. The blood is renewed 
hour by hour. Does it renew itself? If not, what be- 
comes of the statement that life is in the blood? Nay, 
life is poured into the blood, and the cancer is removed 
by the evolution of grosser, and the involution of finer 
being. The "I am" displaces the "I am not"; the 
"me" displaces the " not me." A cancer is no part of 
a man ; and the Son of Man will make short work with 
it. It has no lease of life in the presence of the verb 
"To be." Unmanly in its genesis, it has but to be' 
brought in rapport with a man, to obtain a "leave of 
absence." Man, being spiritual, is the Son of God, the 
hem of whose garment is life and immortality. 

"Why, then, am I not healed," says the sceptic, 
" since I see many a man, and brush against him daily?" 
Nay ; that is precisely what you do not see, nor feel. 
"Why not?" Because only a man can see a man. 
Granted the sight of a man, and this universe would 
appear as it is, — one uniform piece of cloth, without a 






THE VERB " TO BE.", ?1 

sleazy thread in it, or a lazy one. You say, " We die." 
That is your confession of indolence. Like the culprit, 
you had rather be hung than to shell corn. I say, " We 
live: 9 

"Well," you ask, " what is this phenomenon we call 
death?" It is life out of sight. It is the cunning of 
Nature, who lies clown like a possom, and pretends to be 
dead. Or, rather, it is the verb " To Be" assuming the 
passive form, and pretending not to be. " Yes," you 
say, " but the heart of the possom beats, whereas death 
is absolute silence.'' Verily ; and it is the silence of a 
lie. Life destroys it, as an illusion, and John Brown's 
soul still goes marching on. Metaphysically, it is not 
worth a moment's concern as to what shall become of us 
after that personified 0. The question of divine moment- 
is, hoiv to live. Few of us more than half live. Life is 
communal ; and we can only live on the bread of the 
communion ; that is, our true life is in each other, and in 
God. It is spiritual. It is immortal. It rises not from 
the dead. For who ever saw life die? Who has visited 
that u bourne" — that nowhere which no traveller ever 
could visit, or from whose impossible " coma" no saint or 
Saviour ever could awake. There is no show for it, or 
any of its cotemporary evils, in the conjugation of the 
verb "To Be." 

But you say the verb is a part of speech which signifies 
"To be, to do, or to suffer." That is the grammar of our 
ancestry, which has undertaken, but failed, all through 
the ages, to realize suffering. As if the extinction of all 
the animal and nerve-rending species, before man, be 
not proof that suffering is just what cannot be realized. 
Nay, "to be and to do " in the realm of humanity, that 
is, of spirituality, abolishes the not being, or doing, of 
the animal realm of discordance and pain. 



72 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

To be and to do is our revised grammar of existence. 
It suggests the only true science of language, which dis- 
places the possibility of suffering or disease as an entity 
in any crevice or corner of 'Nature or Providence. 

Essential being is moral and spiritual. It is repre- 
sented by mind, and its manifestations ; by man, and his 
eternal health in the infinite life, love, and truth of God. 
For God and Man is all there is. They constitute the 
verb " To Be." All else is non-being ; that is, non-sense, 
or no sense, which is equivalent to no-being. Outside of 
the verb "To Be " there can be no sense in being ; and 
being in which there is no sense cannot be real, even to 
God, who is Supreme Sensation ; nor can any other than 
perfect or harmonious being be real to Supreme Intelli- 
gence. Neither can any other being have a reflection in 
the reason or intelligence of mankind. 

Such is our conjugation of the verb ' ' To Be/' It is the 
I am, and the possible reflections thereof, versus the 
impossible deflections therefrom. It is the unity of being 
in God, the equality of the divine All-Father and All- 
Mother image in man and woman ; God manifest in the 
one-ness and the all-ness of Nature and humanity^ 



THE VERB U T0 LOVE." 73 



THE VERB "TO LOVE." 

SECOND CONJUGATION OF THE VERB " TO BE." 

On a former occasion I spoke on the "Verb To Be." 
I now purpose to speak on the dual counterpart of the 
same subject, to wit, the "Conjugation of the Verb To 
Love." For to be and to love are of the same genesis. 
They are both verbs. And if we were to judge of the 
slow incarnation of the love principle among us, they are 
both verbs to be. 

Several years ago the speaker was member of an ama- 
teur class in the German language. As in most other 
languages, the verb " To Be " and the verb " To Love " 
must of course be conjugated ; and it was suggested that 
a poem be written for translation, in which one or both 
of these verbs and their modifications would occur as 
often as possible, consistent with rhyme and rhetoric. 

It having been left to the present speaker to choose 
between these verbs, he answered that, inasmuch as one 
might as well not be as be without love, he preferred to 
write on that subject. In spite of Hamlet's philosoplry, 
" To be, or not to be, — that is the question," he declared 
that to love, or not to love, — that is the question ; and he 
endeavored, in the philosophical poem, with whose ren- 
dering our lecture may close, to illustrate his own ideal 
conjugation of the love principle. 

Starting as metaphysicians, with the essential unity 
and genesis of all the loves, we affirm that there can be 
but one love, and that the spiritual or divine. Hence we 



74 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

should modify the previous statement, by declaring that 
to love or not to love divinely, — that is the question. 

In my first lecture on the verb " To Be," I remarked 
that the great significance of being, lies in its possibilities. 
These possibilities are spiritual ; and if " To Be " has its 
basis in the infinite " I am," then " To Love" must have 
its basis in the Infinite " I love. 79 Love has its only possi- 
ble reflection in man or Nature, through the eternal love 
principle. Hence to be or not to be, in the direction of 
that principle, is a question more transcendent than 
that of simple animal existence. Neither the verb "To 
Love," nor the verb " To Be," can possibly have a sepa- 
rate reality. Being and loving, or inversely, loving and 
being, are inseparable conditions of growth in any world. 

Hence love is life. Love is the inspiration of all being. 
"I love, thou lovest, he or she loves," inclusive of the per- 
sonified " it loves," are the indispensable antecedents, as 
well as consequents, of the u I am, thou art," or the " he, 
she, or it is." The possible conjugation of the verb " To 
Love" is consistent only with the actual being of God, or 
of divine love. 

But the importance of the conjugation of any love 
turns upon the question, Who is the "I am"? as well 
as upon the subtler question, Who is the who? The 
great question is, Are our loves limited to the narrow 
circle of material sustenance, or are they bounded only 
by the infinite? Beneath the spiritual dome, the "I 
love," or " you love," must imply somewhat more than a 
temporary or mortal esteem. It aspires to immortality. 
It is differentiated from its animal limitations, both in 
compass and duration of being, both in quantity and 
quality of the love impulse. 

What, then, is the genesis of the verb "To Love"? 



THE VERB " TO LOVE." 75 

Referring to our "Metaphysical Chart," you read the 
statement, " God is Love," a statement which implies the 
divine origin of all our human loves. As indicated on 
the chart, love proceeds from God, as a divine unity, by 
the necessity of whose infinite yearning for expression, 
originates the divine duality. This is represented in 
the equation: " The Heavenly Father = the Heavenly 
Mother." In their unitary spiritual image, man, or man- 
kind, is created. Therefore man, as a reflection of God's 
oneness, by the like necessity of love's dual expression, 
departs from spiritual unity, and becomes male and 
female as a condition of reproducing the divine likeness. 

Hence the secondary form of the equation : Man = 
Woman ; through whose apparent departure from, and 
reunion in, their spiritual image, proceed the sons and 
daughters of humanity, as types of the original equation 
of sex in God. 

To this principle, or basic law of sex, the final settle- 
ment of the social, as well as religious problems of life 
must be referred. Indeed, the first step in the direction 
of vital religion, is the recognition of the divine Mother- 
hood, from whose equation of being in God all the one- 
sided masculine ages have departed. In the spiritual 
analysis of the verb " To Love " lies the logic of the pri- 
mary right of woman, the right to be God's daughter, a 
right co-equal and co-eternal with that of God's son. 

The measure of the " I love," no less than that of the 
"I am," is dependent upon the co-equal genesis of the 
divine duality, as well as the divine unity. Or, more 
accurately speaking, neither the divine nor human unity 
of love is possible, except through co-equal reciprocity of 
expression. 

The failure to illustrate in heredity the perfect reflec- 



76 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

tion as distinguished from the apparent deflection of the 
love principle, is manifest in the frigid and narrow the- 
ology of all times, which has recognized a Heavenly 
Father, but no Heavenly Mother of humanity. 

On this stupendous misapprehension of divine love, rest 
the priestly orders who have paid their irreligious and con- 
ceited homage to a male divinity. The u Thirty-nine Arti- 
cles," and all the creeds of antiquity, were written by men. 
Hence, to the equation of God in religion, and the corre- 
sponding equation of man and woman in marriage, in 
labor, and income, do we look for the full conjugation of 
the verb " To Love," and the complete realization of our 
human possibilities. " To love," and " to be loved" 
divinely, that is, co-equally, will constitute the millen- 
nium of our social state. Then the church will restore 
the lost member of the dual Godhead. Then she will 
revise the Lord's prayer, and in the name of the Lady's 
prayer, chant, in her loftiest cathedrals the more than 
Catholic Ave Maria: " Our Mother, who art in heaven, 
hallowed be thy name ! " And to this divine revision 
of the gospel of sex, all the halls of state, and the marts 
of the exchange will respond, " Thy Republic come." 

To the wrong conjugation of the love principle we 
trace the origin and descent of the social and moral, as 
well as physical diseases of mankind. These are all but 
suppositional deflections from the true image of the divine 
love, the logical result of which is just the kind of social 
anarchy we see around us. The result is manifest in the 
subjection of women in marriage, business, and society. 
The signs of her subjection are written out in her destitu- 
tion and her prostitution ; that is, in her poverty, both of 
purse and of love ; a povert} T which reacts upon man in 
the form of dogmatism in religion, corruption in politics, 



THE VERB u TO LOVE." 77 

distrust and failure in business, and vulgarity and frivolity 
in general society . 

It is idle to expect that either men or women can know 
what the verb " To Love " means, in advance of equity, or 
the just equation of the sexes. Divine love includes jus- 
tice ; but not always human love. 

Hence everybody is prepared for love on the side of per- 
sonal sense ; but not everybody for equity. Nevertheless, 
equity lies at the basis of all our loves. It must exist in 
the very germ of our being. As the perfect stalk, 
branches, foliage, and fruit, reside as possibilities in the 
seed of the plant, so does perfect conjugal, parental, filial 
and fraternal love reside in the spiritual genesis of man. 
And as the rose awaits the genial climate and the equa- 
tion of soils as conditions of its advent, as a rose, so 
do man and woman await societary conditions for the 
development and proof of their divine origin. 

Hence we repeat that the law of spiritual equation 
must apply to society and its social discords, as well as to 
the individual and his physical maladies. 

As neither soul nor body can be well except in har- 
mony, so neither can states or nations prosper and 
endure while women are compelled to choose between 
love and a home, or between poverty and prostitution. 
The right conjugation of the verb " To Love," which has 
awaited the centuries, should be given by reformers, relig- 
ious teachers, and progressive statesmen. Our divines, 
who utter the words "Heavenly Father," in solemn 
accent, omitting the more beautiful symbol of the 
"Heavenly Mother," either do not know what they say, 
or else do not say what they know. 

In the light of this unique view of the application of 
the love-principle, it is manifest that the loves of the pres- 



78 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES, 

ent tense in our world are deflections of the divine love, 
which includes all the tenses in one. From the poverty 
of the "I love" or "you love" of the present tense, 
come all the suppositional and high-sounding loves of the 
past and the future, such as : " I might, could, would, or 
should love"; or " I may, can, or will love." In the 
eternal riches of the " I do love," the " I did love," and 
the "I will love," are included. Perfect love. is in the con- 
junctive, and not in the disjunctive mood. The conjunc- 
tive mood of love declares that "What God hath joined 
together, let no man put asunder." And hath not God 
joined together all the' moods and tenses of love in one 
eternal communion? Indeed, it is only the spiritual "I 
love" and "you love" that can conjoin at all. All 
other loves so-called are disjunctive. You have but to 
turn the sharp corner with them, to classify them either 
among the "I did loves" of yesterday, or the promissory 
" I will loves " of to-morrow. 

Hence the importance of spiritualizing our conceptions 
of the love- principle, as a primary and indispensable step 
in the advancement of humanity. Our view of the 
spiritual versus the material elements of love may be 
aided by reference to a phrenological bust, which is a 
theoretic or cranial representation of the perfect man or 
woman. Draw a line between the so-called upper and 
lower brain, and call that the line of deflection. The 
spiritual light, in passing from the rarer soul-medium 
into the denser animal-medium, is turned out of its 
course, analogously to that of a ray of material light on 
passing from the atmosphere into the water. This devia- 
tion from the direct line of soul-love deceives the eye of 
the lover, and is what constitutes the radical difference 
between the sensual and the spiritual expression of the 



Til E VERB c ' TO LOVE . ? ' 



love-life. It is clear that in the perfect man and woman 
there can be no " line of deflection," nor "deflecting 
medium," since the whole being is illuminated by the one 
unitary or divine love-principle. Under such illumination 
it is evident that we cannot speak, or act, or even think, 
impurely. 

The abolition of this line of deflection, or departure 
from spiritual love, is more clearly illustrated on our 
chart, by supposing the water-line to disappear, by the 
convertion of the water-medium into atmosphere, in 
which no rays of light are deflected, but all objects are 
seen in their right relations. In the spiritual atmosphere 
the radiation of love is perfect, because the motive 
power of soul-love is spiritual. Its penetrative rays 
transform the whole man and woman into the divine love- 
likeness ; a transformation by which the birth of Jesus, 
Vishnu, and the saints and saviours of all times, is 
explained. 

That the spiritual illumination of our human loves is 
indispensable to the highest healing power, whether as 
applied to physical or moral diseases, is manifest in the 
historical records of the great apostles and redeemers of 
mankind. These have always been the world's moral 
teachers and healers ; from the age of Moses, who re- 
ceived the. command, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart," to the era of Jesus, who said, " Love 
your enemies ; do good to them that hate you." 

Now, if Jesus was a great metaphysician, was he not, 
therefore, a great lover? In applying the law of cure to 
our fellows, can we heal a person whom we hate? Heal- 
ing comes through the prayer of love. Can you love 
those who " despitefully use you, and persecute you"? 
And can you heal an enemy without love? Hardly, as 



80 HIGHLAND SCHOOL LECTURES. 

an enemy. Only as a brother or sister, whom you carry 
to the very bosom of the divine Father and Mother, can 
you give life and redemption to body or soul. For love 
is the divine impulse, manifest in our humanity. First, 
in the pure sexual desire. Thence in parental, filial, fra- 
ternal, and universal, or divine yearning. The health 
and harmony of human society awaits the advent of such 
love. For such love all men and women are starving ; 
yea, dying, so far as humanity can die at all. Such love 
is one of the four points of the compass, represented by 
our metaphysical chart. I have endeavored to elucidate 
it in the philosophical poem referred to at the commence- 
ment of my lecture, but whose publication elsewhere may 
supersede the occasion for its recitation here. 



-LOVE DIVINE. " 

A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM, 
By J. V. Beneficio. 



"TO LOVE, AND TO BE LOVED." 



CONJUGATION. 



" I love, thou lovest, he or she loves ; we love, ye or you love, 

they love." 



Part I. — Communal Loves. 



Deep mirrored in life's holy sea, 
Our human loves, on unal tree, 
All blend in sweetest sympathy : 

2. 

Parental love, and filial true, 
Fraternal love, life's fortunes through, 
The lover's love, forever new ; 



The love of country and of home, 
How far soe'er the child may roam, 
The love of God 'neath Nature's dome ; 



82 "love divine." 

4. 
The love of woman, and of man, 
Above the party, or the clan, 
In which the ancient love-life ran ; 

5. 

The love which maketh woman free 
As man, in state or family, 
With right to love as well as he ; 

6. 
Communal love, which joins the hand, 
And heart, and purse, on every strand, 
'Till earth becomes the promised land ; 

7. 

Which builds for all a central home, 
From whence no wanderer can roam, 
So high and broad its sacred dome ; 

8. 

The loves that yearn at home to be 
Within the bosom of love's family, 
How far soe'er away at sea ; 

9. 

The nestling loves, all good and wise, 
That look within each other's eyes, 
Un jealous and without disguise, — 

10. 

Because each loveth as it seems, 
By wisdom angels, in love's dreams, 
Admonished to avoid extremes. 



A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM, 83 

Part IT. — Love's Duration. 

1. 

Oh, love me little, love me long," 
Some poet said, in plaintive song ; 
Oh, love me right, and never wrong. 

2. 

Who loves me much should love me well, 
Far better than the tongue can tell, 
Whose pulses pure the bosom swell. 

3. 
Who loves me well will love me true, 
And sing the song of me and you, 
Nor ever say to me, " Adieu." 

4. 
Nor will some other love supreme 
Dispel the early lover's dream ; 
Pure love is an eternal stream. 

5. 
Who loves me well at twenty-four, 
In eighty-eight will love me more ; 
Love's rainbow spans from shore to shore. 

6. 
Who loves me well when I am near 
Can love me better 'cross the sphere, 
If but the lover's eye be clear. 

7. 
Ascended to their azure throne, 
Divided, as from zone to zone, 
True lovers speak in telephone. 



84 "love divine." 

8. 
Across the waves of Jordan, too, 
If to the laws of love we 're true, 
You '11 come to me, and I to you. 

9. 
Above the jealous frosts that nip, 
Our spirit forms the nectar sip, 
Though touching not the mortal lip. 

10. 
Who loves me well in earthly guise 
Will love divinely in the skies, 
Whence mine immortal lover hies. 

11. 
In sacred, holy self-control, 
With heart to heart, and soul to soul, 
E'en now we quaff the heavenly bowl ; 

12. 
That is, if we are wise and good, 
And labor for love's brotherhood, 
So love divine be understood. 



Part III. — Perfect Love. 

1. 

Platonic love, which seraphs teach, 
The highest round that mortals reach ; 
Such is the gospel prophets preach. 

2. 
Though failing oft, the soul shall rise 
Abreast of angels in the skies, 
As chaste, and free, and good, and wise ; 






A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. 85 

3. 

In whose caresses we may see 
The perfect law of liberty, 
Well symbolized for you and me. 

4. 

Perfecting e'er the outer sense, 
We taste the inner fountain whence 
The loves divine fore'er dispense. 

5. 

And if our loves well rounded are, 
The loves of each and all to share, 
We'll ne'er a single lover spare. 

6. 

Who loves my sister loves my brother, 
My father, daughter, son, and mother, 
As we, as one, do love each other. 

7. 

Who loves my lover, loves me too, 
For if so be my love is true, 
Then I can love both you and you ; 

8. 
Not like the loves to mortals given, 
That oft are from each other riven, 
But as the angels' love in heaven. 

9. 

As drops of water in the sea, 
Reflected all, from lea to lea, 
So arch love's rainbow over me. 



86 " LOYE DIVINE." 

10. 

Who loves me thus cloth love me most, 
Like Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
And Mother, too, of the heavenly host ; 

11. 
Whose loves as universal are 
As sunlight, beaming everywhere, 
On daisy, and on lily fair. 



Part IV. — Love's Sanctuary. 

1. 

In every soul there is a shrine, 
In ever}' face are loves divine, 
Which e'en in loveless lovers shine ; 

2. 

Keflecting well to all who see 

The inner bond of unity 

That makes mankind one family. 

3. 
So* let each flower its petals ope, 
In shady dell, or sunny cope, 
From buttercup to heliotrope ; 

4. 
E'en though the £ i passion flower " doth reign 
From age to age, and main to main, 
The queen of all the floral train. 

5. 
The " tender passion" may elude 
The wisest lover's attitude, 
E'en though the gods themselves intrude. 



A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. 87 

6. 
However gracious or well meant, 
Your love, or mine, with best intent, 
Our loves may go before* they're sent. 

7. 

Unbounded by our narrow view, 
'Tis not for me, nor yet for you, 
That love decends the ages through. 

8. 

My love-gift likeness is not me, 
Since love-gift likenesses are we 
Of the forms of all our ancestry. 

9. 

To be with you is joy indeed, 
"While hand in hand we on proceed, 
And eye to eye our fortunes read. 

10. 

To think of you is e'en the same ; 
Nor are the laws of thought to blame, 
If love thus grows into a flame ; 

11. 

Such love as makes the human seem 
The form of God revealed in dream, 
More real than the sunlight's gleam ; 

12. 

Tho' real love implieth more 
Than merely by your hand adore, 
Or mine to give you evermore. 



88 " LOVE DIVINE." 

13. 

Such love will make the honest neighbor 
Give love for love, and labor for labor, 
And wield for truth fair justice's sabre. 



Part V. — Love Culture. 

1. 

True love will check her passions strong, 
The right discerning from the wrong, 
Thus honoring fair freedom's song ; 

2. 

For who so from love's fountain draws, 
Well knows that freedom, too, has laws, 
As each effect must have a cause. 

3. 

The law of culture is the clew 
That brings the love divine to view, 
For him and her, and me and you. 

4. 

Our " ruling loves " are always free, 
Our " underlings " most need to be 
En route to u social liberty." 

5. 

All hail the man of self-control, 
Whose love inspires the loveless soul ; 
His name among the gods enroll. 



A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. 89 

6. 

Whose kisses are as pure and free 
As woman's love and sympathy, 
Because they end at one — two — three ; 

7. 
While leaving still a margin wide, 
For ebb and flow of true love's tide, 
E'er kisses false are multiplied. 

8. 

For loves, untrue, can scarcely kiss, 
E'en once, with love's intrinsic bliss ; 
Enchained by lust or selfishness. 

9. 

Chained loves the skies of love en cloud, 
Fair virtue weaves her funeral shroud, 
And Nature weeps, in pain, aloud. 

10. 
But doubt not true love's rich supplies ; 
Through equipoise and culture wise, 
Fair souls in soul-love bodies rise. 

11. 

Then let the lover's song be sung, 
By all the old, and all the young, 
In every land and every tongue. 

12. 

Then love me great, and love me small, 
Since we are children short and tall, 
And Qod is love, and " All in All." 



90 QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 
I.— Verb "To Be." 

1. What is " actual" vs. possible being? 

2. What is the genesis of the " I am"? 

3. In what direction is man omnivorous? 

4. What is " unconscious " being? 

5. What is the realm of imagination? 

6. Is there any impersonal pronoun? Is God per- 
sonal ? 

7. What is the dooryard of Science? Religion? 

8. Is Nature ' ' unspiritual " ? 

9. What is divine geometry vs. ' ' divine wrath" ? 

10. How does man geometrize ? In what directions ? 

11. Is being local? 

12. To state being is to be what? 

13. What is the import of " judge"? "Jury"? 

14. God states the universe how? Man states what? 

15. What part of speech is the centre of all language? 
How illustrated ? 

16. Has a molecule volition? 

17. What is it to know a plant or a tree? 

18. Is life in the blood? What is poured into it? 

19. What is it to see a man? The son of man? 

20. Life out of sight is what? 

21. Death is the silence of what? 

22. Import of " bread of life"? 

23. Of "to do"? Of "to suffer"? 

24. What is essential being? Relation to sense? To 
thought ? 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 91 

II. — Verb "To Love." 

1. The import of the term " conjugation " ? 

2. How is the verb " To Be " related to the verb "To 
Love"? 

3. What constitutes the unity of the loves? 

4. The fundamental question ? 

5. The possibilities of being are what? 

6. Inseparable conditions of, are what? 

7. Basis of complete conjugation of "To Love" is 
what? How illustrated by the chart? 

8. Unity and duality in God ? In man? Nature? 

9. Equation of being in God? In man? 

10. How related to social progress ? To heredity? 

11. Deflection in the male priesthood? Creeds of ? 

12. "Thy Kingdom " vs. " Thy Republic" ? 

13. What are the proofs of deflection in the sexual 
equation ? 

14. " Love " vs. c ' Equity " ? How analyzed ? 

15. Is Equity germinal? Conditions of? 

16. Loves of present tense are deflections of what? 

17. Love that includes all moods and tenses is what? 

18. Conjunctive vs. disjunctive moods of love? 

19. What is the "line of deflection"? Illustrate 
" Deflecting medium." How abolished? (See chart.) 

20. How explain birth of Christ? Of Vishnu, etc.? 
They were all great — what? 

21. Can we heal an enemy? 

22. Significance of divine yearning? Evidence of, in 
whom? 



92 questions in review. 

Love Divine. 

(Interpretation of metaphysical phrases.) 

PART I. — COMMUNAL LOVE. 

Verse 1. Significance of " unal tree"? Import of 
"blend"? 

2. Import of phrase u forever new " ? 

3. What constitutes u Nature's dome " ? Horizon of ? 

4. Explain " ancient love-life"? 

5. " Free as man " ? " State " ? " Family " ? 

6. " Hand, and heart, and purse" ? 

7. " A central home " ? " High and broad " ? 

8. " Yearn at home to be"? What is u homesick- 
ness " ? 

9% " The nestling loves " ? Philosophy of ? Eeligion 
of? 

10. " Avoid extremes " ? How explained? 

II. — love's duration. 

1. "Love little — long"? 

2. " Love much — well " ? 

3. " Song of me and you " ? Limitation of ? 

4. " An eternal stream"? 

5 . " Love's rainbow " ? Spans from — whence ? 

6. " Cross the sphere"? " Love's eye be clear" — 
how? 

7. u Divided " — how ? Zone of love ? 

8 . " Waves of Jordan " ? " Laws of love " ? 

9. "Jealous frosts"? u Spirit forms"? " Mortal 
life"? 

10. « Earthly guise " ? " In the skies " ? 

11. « Self-control" ? " Soul to Soul"? 

12. "Love's brotherhood" ? 



QfUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 93 

III. PERFECT LOVE. 

1 . " Platonic love " ? Gospel of the prophets ? 

2. " Abreast of angels "? " As good and wise " ? 

3 . " Perfect law of liberty " ? 

4. What is perfection of " outer sense"? 

5 . What are ' ' well-rounded loves " ? " Loves of each 
and all"? 

6. What is "family" love? 

7. " Both you and you " ? Principle of ? 

8. What are "riven" loves? Why riven? 

9 . " Reflected all " ? Why ? The " arch " ? 

10. " Heavenly Father " and ' ' Mother " — who ? 

11. " On daisy and on lily " ? 

iv. — love's sanctuary. 

1 . Shrine of soul-love ? — whence ? 

2. " The inner bond " ? 

3. Law of " each flower " ? 

4. " Passion flower " ? The < ' floral train " ? 

5. The " lover's altitude " ? 

6. What are ei unsent" loves? 

7. ' ' Our narrow view " ? Does i ' love descend " ? 

8. What is " my love-gift likeness " ? 

9. What is " hand in hand " ? 

10. Ci The laws of thought " ? 

11. "The form of God " ? " Sunlight's gleams " ? 

12. " Mine to give you " ? 

13. " Labor for labor " ? u Justice's sabre " ? 

V. LOVE-CULTURE. 

1 . "Freedom's song " ? How honored ? 

2. Freedom's laws ? 



QUESTIONS IN REVIEW. 



3. " Law of culture" ? " Love divine " ? 

4. " Our ruling loves "? " Our underlings " ? 

5. " Self-control "? " Loveless Soul"? 

6. " Love and sympathy " ? 

7. "Margin" of love? 

8. " Loves untrue " ? Metaphysics of ? 

9. " Skies of love " ? 

10. " Fair souls " ? " Philosophy of soul-love bodies " ? 

11. "Old" and "young"? 

12. " God is Love " ? (See Metaphysical Chart.) 



APPENDIX. 






EXTRACTS OF LECTURES. 

WRITTEN AND VOCAL SYMBOLS ; OR METAPHYSICS APPLIED 

TO LANGUAGE. 

In the January issue of The Voice (Albany), the 
speaker gave some hints on the relation of vocal to mental 
attitudes, and thence to health, or physieial harmony. 

But mental attitudes are correlated to mental symbols, 
and thence to vocal or written expression. That is to 
say, we are compelled to think as well as to speak in 
symbols, or not think or speak at all. 

To think is to be. To be is to express being — subjec- 
tively or objectively. Expression of being is language. 
Language is significant, or represented by signs; and 
there is no other known "language. The unknown in 
science, literature, or art, can only be known symbolically. 
With every thought is born necessarily and simultane- 
ously its corresponding sign ; and this correspondence 
relates not only to every sentence, or word in written or 
oral speech, but to every element of every word. 

On this metaphysical principle we have long since rec- 
ognized the importance of starting the student in oratory 
with infallible elemental signs, since the sign must be in 
the mind, as a correct sound, before it can be orally repre- 
sented. 



96 



APPENDIX, 



As an assistance to perfect articulation, we have em- 
ployed a very simple system of phonetography, covering 
both spoken and written language. In this the student is 
required to rewrite his own, or selected composition, with 
a distinct enunciation of the only letter-sign that can 
form the component part of the word. All other letters 
are lies in orthography, and of course must be treated 
accordingly, so far as reading or elocutionary practice is 
concerned. 

In preparing the accompanying table we retain as many 
of the letters of the accepted orthography as possible, 
and consistent with the science or art of speech. 

ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE. 



Consonants. 


p> &; 


t, d; tc, dj; k, g ; I, r ; m, n; nk, ng ; ks,gz; 


/, v; 


thj dh; s, 

< 
< 


z ; sh, zh ; iv, y ; h, wh ; hw 9 hy. 
zh (Ger. hard, as in Bucft) ; 
zh (Ger. soft, as in Leic/i£). 


Vowels. 


Diphthongs. 


e in 


eel 


i in it 


ei in dez'ty 


oe in 


earl 


u in wp 


ai in gaiety 


a in 


ale 


e in ell 


oi in owing 


se in 


air 


a in at 


6i in luouis 


a in 


art 


a in ask 


ai (I) aisle 


a in 


all 


o in on 


iu (u) due 


o in 


old 


6 in none 


ou in owr 


6 in 


ooze 


o (ii) foot 


oi in oil 



The student may comprehend the table of elements, and 
represent them, approximately, as follows : — 

1. Utter the first column of vowels in the rising and 



EXTRACTS OF LECTURES. ■ 97 

falling inflections of the natural voice, respectively ; then 
alternately. Same in treble and bass voices. 

2. Same [except in rising inflection] with second 
column of vowels, and the diphthongs. 

3. Combine the sets of consonants, successively with 
the vowels, in the same manner, exploding where pos- 
sible ; beginning with p alone ; then p b ; then t alone ; 
then t d ; &c. 

In writing, as the term " phonetography " may suggest, 
the student uses the same signs, as above, or as are used 
in printing, save only those which Misrepresent the ele- 
mental sound, or which represent no sound at all. 

We correspond with our students, and they with each 
other, in phonetography, and there is a pleasant sense of 
a scientific, as well as artistic, perfection in doing so, since 
the exact articulation must be in the mind before a word 
can be written. 

EXAMPLE. 

Fol praziz giv to dhoz ho stand 
Az sentinelz ov liberti; 
Ho gard dhe homstedz ov our land, 
And mak her institushons fre; 
• Ho boldli fas dhe kannon'z am, 
And grappel widh dhe miti f o ; 
In mortal kombat o'er dhe slan, 
ExpFring aft [oft] in fredom'z thro. 

These lines, thus printed (or written), exactly represent 
the student's enunciation, whether his orthoephy be good or 
bad. The first word might have been written either ' ' Ful," 
or U F61"; the second might have been " prazez " ; the 
last word of the second line might have been "liberti/' 
the word " homstedz " might have been t; homstedz," or 
u homstedz"; or "institushons," " institoshons," etc. 

Phonetography (fonetografi) could thus be introduced 



98 APPENDIX. 

among elocutionists, without insisting upon an entirely new 
alphabet. By the use of " accented letters/' as found 
in all dictionaries, and with which all good printing offices 
are provided, and by quoting proper names, and terms 
which would look too objectionable spelled phonetically 
at the outset, the chief objection to the use of sound- 
symbols would finally be removed. 

In the interest of civilization vs. barbarism, we await 
the advent of clearer thoughts and clearer symbols in 
literature. 



"OUR COSTUMES." 99 



"OUR COSTUMES." 

From a lecture of Prof. Bryan J. Butts, given at No. 
7 Mt. Pleasant Place, Roxbury, we make the following 
extracts : — 

"Our subject may raise the query whether the latest 
French fashions, the masks of the theatre, or Carlyle's 
' Philosophy of Clothes,' will form the web of my present 
lecture. But from the standpoint of our ' Highland 
School of Mental Philosophy,' the term ' Costume ' has a 
double significance. The ' rounded feet and dainty ' of 
the little child, as well as the 'tiny shoes of crimson,' 
with which mother clothes them, are a part of the baby's 
costume in the earth-form. Are they not even more a 
part of it in the world of spiritual reality ? 

" I know the preacher has declared that i all flesh is 
grass.' But what is grass but the costume of the fields, 
and the beauty of the spreading landscape? The Evan- 
gelist speaks, too, of God ; manifest in the flesh,' thus 
exalting the costume of humanity ; while St. Paul talks of 
the different kinds of flesh, as of the flesh of the birds, 
and the flesh of beasts, as well as of men. 

" If flesh, then, be the garment of all life, then life, as 
it advances, must re-clothe itself in better, or more im- 
proved costumes. Ascending to the realm of. the spirit- 
ual, it assumes the transfigured forms of the Christs, and 
dwells in the heavens as well as the earths. 

" The scientists start with the germ-cell, molecule, or 
monad. But what is molecule, or monad, unclothed 
upon? Leibnitz speaks of the 'naked monad,' or soul 



100 APPENDIX. 

without a garment ; as if life and her costumes could be 
separated. 

" No scientist has yet been able to discern the starting- 
point or form of the 4 germ-cell ' from the life-principle. 
He finds a ' nerve ' at the lowest round in the ladder. 
But it is not a 'dead' nerve, which, as a material sub- 
stance, has no manifest life. As ' mind- stuff,' the so- 
called nerve or muscle is only such relatively to another 
form of life. For the costumes of life are not all of one 
pattern, and it requires life to doff an old garment, as 
well as to put on a new. Nor is life so stinted in her 
resources that both her 4 brightly-plaided stockings,' and 
her ' soft arms fondly twining ' around us in the earth- 
sphere, may not be reproduced or transfigured in the 
heavens. 

i( Refinement of organism is a basic law of being. The 
spirit of life determines the forms of it. The organization 
of the radiata, the fishes, the birds, and the mammals are 
their spiritual costumes. The wolf -robe is woven by the 
wolf-spirit. The texture of the robe is in perfect correla- 
tion to the animus of the wolf. But the auimus and its 
costumes are out of correspondence with the perpetually 
renewing Spirit. Hence the wolf-robe is continually being 
woven in the progressive web and woof of the wolf's life. 

"What, then, you ask, is the wolf's life? Evidently it 
is not in the robe, or physical body. On the contrary, the 
physical body must be, if it be at all, in the life of the 
wolf, since it appears only while life is present, and dis- 
appears only as a costume. 

li Now if the life of animal or of man were mechanical 
or mathematical, and not spiritual or resuscitative, the loss 
of a costume would be the loss of life. The severance of 
a finger-nail, or of the entire body, would then be equiva- 



" OUR COSTUMES." 101 

lent to a severance of the mind, or soul-substance, inde- 
pendent of which it is manifest that neither finger-nail 
nor body could either be or be severed. It is equally 
manifest that a causation which is equal to both the 
growth and severance of its own costumes in one sphere 
of being, may be equal to their renewal in another. For 
what is the phenomenon of the germination and growth of 
seed-vessel in vegetable, or spermatozoa in animal life, 
but the fictitious death, that is, doffing of one form of 
being for another form of the same being ? 

" We call ourselves men and women, and not wolves, 
having doffed our costumes for many generations. But 
it is evident that we are still wearing not only the doffed 
costumes of our ante-human ancestry, in whose wools or 
furs we parade, but that we are also continuing the inter- 
nal manufacture of their fleshly robes. Fortunately for us, 
as metaphysicians (though unfortunately as physicians) , it 
is not the animal, but the spiritual costume that survives, 
whether in the fish, bird, reptile, or mammal, whose 
habiliments man has both taken on and thrown off, from 
the dawn of eternity. All species are but the ante-natal 
generations of man, as typified in the human ovum, which 
assumes successively all the gradations of the pre-existing 
genera. 

" Well, then, you ask, What is man? or who is he? 
To answer your question is to explain all knowledge. 
But though we may not say what man is, we are equal to 
saving what he is not. He is not matter, that is, costume 
only, whatever that may be. His ego and his doffed 
finger-nail or beard are not equally pro-creative. Man 
knows, so far as he knows anything, that he is man, and 
not animal ; that he is neither a wolf nor of the texture 
of a wolf -robe. He knows these as the i not me ' 



102 APPENDIX. 

below 4 me/ while he aspires to the spiritual or divine Me 
above ' me/ whose costumes alone can perfectly^ ' me.' 

" Man is the Son of Man. He is the ; world-spirit/ in 
whose vital magnetism all species below him are possible. 
They are possible only as his inadequately adjusted gar- 
ments. He lives in them as an actor lives in his tem- 
porary characters. All through the ages man has been 
performing a masquerade among the awe-struck species. 
The kernel of corn, starting from its germ-cell, disappears 
in the jointed stalk and leaves, and only unmasks itself 
again in the re-appearance of the kernel in the ear. So 
man, being spiritual in genesis and evolution, disappears 
all through his earthly generations, to reappear onty in 
his native heaven ? 

u Now it is to our native heavens that we call your 
attention, when we would heal or nullify all your earthly 
maladies. The heaven of the human mind being that of 
thought, reason, and spirituality, it is obvious that neither 
the germination, nor the evolution or growth of physical 
disease or error, can originate in that soil." 

JUSTUS, 

Reporter. 
7 Mt. Pleasant Place, Eoxbury. 



EXTRACTS OF INSTRUCTIONS. 103 



EXTRACTS OF INSTRUCTIONS. 

I. "Lung Stricture" (False). 

The lungs are spiritual, and responsive to thought and 
emotion. The " stricture " is as unreal as is the miscon- 
ceived image of it in the mind (no mind) of error. The 
ancestral " belief " renders the phenomenon psychologically 
possible, but not actual or real. The disproof of its 
reality by logical demonstration, or spiritual intuition, 
will displace the false mental image by the true ; when it 
will be seen that no other image ever has, or ever could 
play upon the " stringed instrument" of the soul. 

Consequently, no stricture of the student's lungs can 
be rationally affirmed. A moiety of inward breathing (the 
only breathing possible) will prove the nonentity of 
the " stricture." 

II. "Nervous Prostration" (False). 

Such the symptom ; not the verity. Let the cloud that 
hides the truth be dissipated at once, as in the presence 
of a strong Angel — the Angel of the Almighty. This 
phenomenon of weakness is a libel on the Divine Purpose ; 
as if that were as shiftless or idiotic as these symptoms 
would imply. Let the guardians of this lady face about 
and away from all this infernal nonsense. Cease your 
insane and incessant assertion of the reality of a lie, as if 
"Error," and not Truth, held the chart and compass 
of being. The student's strength lies in God, and her 
weakness — nowhere. 



104 APPENDIX. 

Let the Angels of the Orient appear, while you orient 
yourself in the beams of divine truth and harmony. Your 
false guardians have leave of absence. 



III. "Sick Abed" (False). 
Waits for a " cup of tea " to recuperate. 

This is an illusion. The only virtue in the tea is the 
mind in it, and that is imputed to it by the mind not in it. 
Why not employ the " mind-stuff" at once, without dis- 
sipation ? As if the mind could be any more mind by 
seeing itself in a tea-cup. 

This is a cowardty, vicarious transaction — like the 
" Scheme of Salvation," which would give backbone to 
human souls by " imputed righteousness." As if an empty 
bag could stand up on its assumed fulness ! 

Arise, thou idiot ! A spur in the mind is worth two in 
a tea-cup. 

IV. " Ovarian Weakness" (False). 

The paleness of the face (so obvious to the eye) is 
not the criterion of truth. Your being is in God. All 
other being is non esse. To prove this, look beyond 
the pallid cheek, the spasmodic fever and dullness, to the 
primal source of health, — • the Countenance of God. 
Looking thereon, all physical pain and weariness departs. 
As shadows, they flee from the Orient. As the displaced 
cells in a withering leaf resume their normal functions 
when turned to the sunbeam, so the deranged ovaries, 
the depleted blood-vessels, and the lustreless eye assume 
their natural action in the presence of divine light. 



EXTRACTS OF INSTRUCTIONS. 105 

Prayer. 

Thou Infinite Mother ! permit this child of thy love to 
repose in Thy Divine bosom. May the pulses of her life 
respond to Thine, and all her being renew in the radiance 
of Thine Omnipotent Spirit. Let her be assured that 
as Thy child there can be nothing to fear but her own dis- 
trust of Thee, and Thine eternal goodness. May nothing 
contradict her ability to walk in thy light. Bid her arise, 
in Thy Holy Name, and be well. Amen. 

V. " Blood Poison" {False). 

The blood has no mind of its own. Its vibratory mole- 
cules are determined in their movements by the quality 
of the student's mind-substance. The belief affects 
the phenomenon. Keason will affect the belief ; religion 
will abolish it. In reason and religion there can be no 
such belief. Hence, no such phenomenon. 

As a daughter of God, imbued with the divine vitality, 
let the student regard these symptoms as unreliable wit- 
nesses of truth. 

" Chemicalization." 

Let it proceed until the light is fully manifest, and the 
pupil beholds her true likeness in God. Meanwhile, may 
the agitation be pacific and painless, like the gentle 
flow of angelic affections. With your hands in those 
of your Heavenly Father and Mother, arise, O sister ! in 
the majesty of Truth, and say: "Hallowed be Thy 
Name." 

VI. " Secretiveness " (False). 

Truth is worthy of confidence. The pupil labors under 
the illusion that he can be well in ' : error " ; that with 



106 APPENDIX. 

one baud extended to his teacher, and the other to his 
" woiidy means," he may secrete the facts from the eye 
of God. 

The "Spirit of Truth" is searching. All they who 
would become well some other way are thieves and rob- 
bers (phenomenally). Health is Spiritual. Eternal 
Justice presides. The case before the jury is bona fide. 
No evasion. No circumlocution. No reservation. 

Hence, " Secretiveness," you are a liar. You are 
a mole blundering into the daylight, with the dirt on your 
head. Shake it off, and be a man ; or else go back to 
your burrow — and your " rheumatism." Amen. 

VII. " Distrust" (False). 

Truth and Trust are twin brothers — lawfully born. 
Error and Distrust are abortions — spiritually unborn. 
Distrust is atheism. But atheism, having no being 
in the Divine Presence, can give no being to distrust. 
These pupils cannot distrust in truth, and out of truth 
they cannot be. They can only mistrust by attempting 
to realize their distrust. In our " distrust" of God we 
banish ourselves from heaven (happiness) ; in our distrust 
of our brother (" Son of God ") we may lock him out of 
our hearts or homes ; but we also lock ourselves in ; for 
the same key that closes on him closes on us. " He that 
would save his life (or property) shall lose it." But in 
Truth (Trust) no man's life is lost. 

" Distrust," and not "Tumor," is the students' 
(un) real malady. Trust in Truth will abolish both. 

VIII. " Monthly Periods " (False). 

The vision of blood is a symptom of lunacy. The 
"moonstruck" mind is negative to lunar changes. It 



EXTRACTS OF INSTRUCTIONS. 107 

varies from its orbit (apparently) when the moon varies, 
permitting the Divine Image to trail in the dust ; as if 
man or mind was ever born of " flesh and blood." 

Let the student also be instructed that her " turn of 
life " can only occur under the same lunar illusion. Life 
never " turns." It is continuous and immortal. The 
"turn" is the mind (no mind) halting in " material 
belief," and attempting to make error truth by saying, 
" I am born of matter." As if there were an} T barrier to 
divine motherhood, or u God manifest." 

IX. "Dropsy" (False). 

Only the spiritual body, the soul's costume, is real. 
All enlargement or diminution is deflection — shadow — 
possible only in " material" light. 

To the pure intelligence, which is of God, we appeal. 
In the light of such intelligence (the only true light), 
there is no malady : only eternal peace and repose in the 
bosom of God. 

All ill is in finite thought. The divine thought is all 
inclusive of good, and hence, all exclusive of ill. 

But "ill" is not excluded in human thought except 
spiritually. It is not abolished by any ledgerdemain, or 
circumlocution, as you would set a trap for a thief. Nor 
even by direct onslaught, as you would eject a burglar 
from your house. You may catch the "thief," or eject 
the "burglar"; but so long as their images remain as 
verities in the world's thought, neither thief nor burglar 
is dead. 

Let the student face away from her deflected " natural 
body," and behold only the face and form of her Angel 
Mother in Heaven — thus denying the phenomenon 
(dropsy) as representing truth. The truth in this lady's 



108 APPENDIX. 

being is not manifest in any such guise. The reality is 
not that side out. 

Arise, then, O student of divine harmony, and be 
clothed upon with right reason ! Let health and sanity 
reign ! 

X. " Intemperance " {False). 
Appearance of fulness of blood. 

These are symptoms — not of what is, but of what is 
not (in truth) . There are no " red globules " in the blood, 
or any blood, other than of the mind's creation. To 
accept the redness of the face (phenomenon of the " red 
wine") as a reality, is to color the white soul with an 
error, and thus lose sight of the truth, whose reflection is 
perfect — more perfect than the hues of the rainbow. 

Let the student, therefore, see himself as he fe, that he 
may no longer appear as he is not. Let him discover the 
illusion of the supposed power of matter in alcohol over 
mind in God, and consequently the fictitiousness of his 
apparent need of " stimulation." The soul needs truth 
only ; and it is not true that there is any potency in a 
drug not imputed to it. To believe you require wine 
or brandy is to inflame your blood with it (phenominally) , 
though you touch it not. To discover their nonentity is 
to end their psychological reign over you, and make 
it easier for you to succeed in business. 

XI. — " Tobacco " (False) . 

Sajne as "intemperance"; an imputed righteousness 
(that is, power) in the weed, to minister to happiness. 
The " pallid face," the " coated stomach," the " nervous 
tremor," the "mental impotency," are false phenomena 



EXTRACTS OF INSTRUCTIONS. 109 

of " mind in error" (no mind), none of which can have a 
being in the mind of truth, which will make short work 
with them all. 

XII. — " Insanity " {False) . 

Sanity only can reign. Non-sanity (insanity) is impo- 
tent, that is, unreal. Sanity only is real, and its opposite 
can only be accounted real by mind (absence of mind) , 
which is itself " insane" ; that is, upon whose soul-mirror 
the false image of "insanity" can be reflected as real. 
The true mirror can reflect health and sanity only. Whoso 
looks in any other mirror will see his own mis-conception 
reflected, that is, " thrown back," upon himself (where it 
belongs) . 

Let both student and guardian, therefore, look away 
from the false perspective, and into the divine mirror, that 
is, the countenance of God, which can only " throw back" 
the divine " reason," the eternal " Logos." We deny the 
charge of " insanity " which is made against our sister, 
who is God's child. Looking upward, we declare that her 
angel doth behold the face of her Mother in heaven, to 
whose holy guardianship we commit this daughter of Her 
infinite love. 

XIII. — " Obsession " (False) . 

Infinite thought is all there is or can be. The thought 
or belief of " obsession," therefore, is a nonentity. The 
infinite cannot obsess the finite. There is nothing to 
obsess or to be obsessed. The truth will not obsess 
itself. The phenomenon is illusive, based on the assumed 
reality of error, or deflection from the truth. The angu- 
lar gesticulations of the student are supposed by her aud 
others to be real, through their ignorance of the impossi- 
bility of distorting the form or features of truth. 



110 



APPENDIX. 



XIV. — " Gray Hair " (Premature) . 

A phenomenon only. Let the student recognize the 
truth : that there is no color in the mind other than its 
own reflection ; that his hair is gray only through the 
soul's apparent deflection from the perfect spiritual life. 
Let him acknowledge only the style of hair consistent 
with health and normal beauty, and his knowledge will be 
confirmed by the re-appearance of a darker thread of hair 
as an inevitable response to the life force. 

God is true beauty and true health. Think as God 
thinks ; paint as God paints, and no undue prominence of 
gray or black can exist as a phenomenon. Deny what 
seems; affirm what is; act in the " spirit of truth," and 
the gray-headed liar will disappear. 

XV. — " Love-Sickness " (False) . 

False, because unhappy. The student thinks it neces- 
sary to fast in order to gain the wisdom that will lead him 
out of his apparent trouble. "Apparent " because it can- 
not be real in presence of the eternal Father and Mother 
love, of which " love-sickness " is not a re-flection, 
but a de-flection. This sickly phenomenon is not love. 
Love was never sick. Love is well (in truth). The 
student is a hypocrite ; first pretending to love, and 
now pretending "love-sickness." His "disappoint- 
ment" is the "chemicalization" of his pretence. 
Through his mis-belief that he loved, followed his lady 
friend's "duplicity," and his present opinion of the 
" cruelty of truth." Let both parties recognize the 
reality of that soul-solvent (Truth), and not love again 
until they come to it. Then they will be happily in love. 



EXTRACTS OF INSTRUCTIONS. Ill 

XVI. — " Domestic Trouble" (False). 

Let the student, as well as her husband, be instructed 
that her ' ' domestic unhappiness " is wholly illusive ; 
that she has not, nor ever did have, anything to fear, as 
a lover, in the presence of "love divine." Let both be 
assured that there is not any inharmony between them 
that is not fictitious ; that they are simply dupes when 
they bemoan their sad fate ; no such fate being possible 
in reality. 

Be assured, sister, that the mind, as a reflex of God, is 
above accident ; that no domestic disagreement is possi- 
ble in your real being, and that it is well for you to grasp 
the eternal verity of this statement. You can then see 
clearly, either the wisdom of your marital relation, or 
else the steps that wisdom may indicate in your way out 
of it. The causes that render woman (or man) conju- 
gally unhappy can only exist through her misunderstand- 
ing of herself. In God she may learn the nonentity of 
these causes, and see her husband, metaphysically, as he is, 
and not as he appears to be. Retiring to her closet, and 
shutting the door on all inharmony, the "Spirit of Truth" 
will open for her the eyes of her husband, and her own 
eyes, and they will continue to walk hand in hand, or else 
— part in peace. 

Prayer. 

Wherefore, Holy Father and Mother in heaven, permit 
this child of your love to behold your countenance, and 
be well and happy. 



112 APPENDIX. 



MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS. 

" The enemy is routed, so far as to seek new quarters. 
The truth te, there are no quarters for error. The symp- 
toms are to be interpreted in the divine language, in 
which all terms of disease are null and void. There 
is no place for them." 

" The sister and nurse of the student need severe in- 
structions. They reason from symptoms (physical), 
such as ' difficult breathing,' as if God were ' out of 
breath'; or from accelerated 'heart throbs,' as if His 
child were liable to ' drop dead.' Let them be assured 
that there is nothing to fear ; that, with their own minds 
in serene rapport with truth, health becomes possible to 
themselves, or their elder sister. Let the pulse beat 
gently, Holy Spirit, and all fear be cast out by ' perfect 
love.' " 

" Hold on to the only reliable staff, in this life, or any 
other, — the staff of pure reason and true religion. Then, 
health and sanity will be manifest. There is no other 
health — no other sanity — but the spiritual. Awaken, 
then, to the eternal reality, child of God ! and the 
morning will open in whose radiance no semblance of 



sorrow can remain." 



u 



What is the ' Spirit of Truth ' in this case ? Is this 
picture of ' cancer,' or ' tumor,' drawn by an artist? Is 
the Divine Purpose represented here ? Or, is this a cari- 
cature? Let not the perfect ideal, that is, the real, in 
God, be thus mocked, as if such a phenomenon could be 



MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS. 113 

reported as a ' fact ' to any other than an insane hospital. 
Facts are spiritual. There are no other facts. Facts are 
in the mind (of Truth). Whatever contradicts truth, 
love, life, good (harmony), is not a fact, but a fiction." 

" Do you love truth, O artist! and therefore, paint 
these features as real? But loving truth, do you yet wish 
that it were untruth, so you could paint otherwise? More 
likely you are deceived, and the truth is not in you. Else 
you could see no inharmony to paint. A true artist can 
draw no such likeness of this lady, who is a child of God, 
and without spot or wrinkle in her real image." 

"The tumor is a shadow, which obeys the substance. 
It is a symptom of health. There are no other symptoms. 
Nothing can impede the life-force ; and the force that ac- 
cumulates (dropsy) can dissipate. The 4 doctor ' (or 
1 nurse') is an idiot, who thinks that the student is in dan- 
ger from any cause. The tumor is Nature's declaration of 
independence, her affirmation of its nothingness to her. 
The physician who interprets it otherwise is himself 
a tumor in the womb of truth, and will be ejected accord- 
ingly. 

" The sickly sophistry of i doctor ' and nurse is baseless, 
and impotent as the opinion of an owl sitting in judg- 
ment on the daylight ! Let the owl's eyes be blasted ! I, 
Truth, will show the door of exit for these nocturnal blas- 
phemers and hypocrites, these imps of the ' Infernus,' 
who dare to stand up on their ancestral extremities, and 
declare that man is ' born to die,' that they have dis- 
covered a tumor that nry Spirit cannot deal with, nor their 
own puny knife cut away from death ! Ought I not to 
give place to such (infernal) ignorance, and permit a vis- 
ion of a graveyard to come in between Me and my people ? 
Nay ; I declare their impotence ! A single whiff of my 



114 APPENDIX. 

Spirit (breath) shall leave them where they belong, — no- 
where." 

"The student is 'lazy, cowardly, conceited, sceptical' 

— these, the false symptoms, as manifest in 'dropsy, 
costiveness, parasitic growth,' etc. All of which, and 
more, the student is accused of by that unconscious liar, — 
' Material Sense.' A liar, because attempting to bear 
testimony in the Supreme Court of Spirit. Groping 
only in the darkness, it would disprove the divine likeness 
by the reflex phenomena of its own ignorance. Burrow- 
ing in c matter,' it ignores the potency of mind. Born 
of ' dust,' of ' dust' only can it bear witness. 

" Let the heavenly witnesses come to the stand, and the 
case of the student be tried before the Supreme Judge 
and a ' jury of her peers.' " 

"It is obvious that no wisdom can justify this man's 
opinion that ' death ' is necessary as a relief for his 
pretended ' suffering.' Nor is there any basis for his lady 
friend's fear? Let her 'hold her tongue.' Her imper- 
tinence is the companion of her fear, and is only equalled 
by her ignorance. In her ignorance she has no right to 
be within a thousand miles of this man for whom she 
professes friendship. Friendship will not confound a 
friend with the clothes he wears. Nor will friendship 
accompany a friend in mortal procession to a graveyard ; 
but only to life and immortality." 

4 ' You are a brazen-faced or — what is worse — a blank 
idiot, when you attempt to contradict your health in 
God. Your cancer is 'real,' is it? — a vision of truth? 
Out with you into the outer darkness whence you came ! 

— you blasphemer of the very name of God. An 
'event of Providence,' is it? — 'swollen leg' included, 



MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS. 115 

-* 

and which you project into the daylight, and say, ' Behold 
how real! The linked lightnings of the wrath of God are 
meet for such a rnad venture into the light of such hideous 
deformity of darkness ! Reason, religion, and ' common 
sense,' are all violated by the accepted reality of these 
symptoms." 

" Symptoms : moral ' chemicalization' of lies, circumlo- 
cution, and accumulated folly. Indolence, l shoddy 
aristocracy,' and desire to escape both the name and 
hardship of work, with swinish willingness to see herself 
wallowing in the gilded sty of her lingering opulence. 
The pupil has her ' fine furniture ' on the brain, and her 
6 dear child, Mabel' in her heart, except she bite too hard 
at the nipple, when the parental tushes appear." 

"These, the symptoms to the material sense. But to 
the Spiritual sense, none of these. The pupil is not un- 
truthful to Truth (God), who cannot be contradicted. 
Her ' lies ' are nonentities. Nor have her i errors ' a 
name in the Supreme Court, or her apparent ingrati- 
tude to the writer a place in the mind of God. She 
can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth, 
whose name alone can be hallowed ; and whose angel (in 
the pupil) still beholds the face of the Divine Mother. 
Let that Face be revealed to the daughter. Let the 
chemicalization that still must follow the finite illusion 
restore her to reason. The ' chemicalization ' is the 
Yoice of the AlmiglnVy, before whose Face all lies and 
duplicity must dwindle into inanity and nothingness, 
while the better soul rises, like the eagle, to her native 
skies." 



116 APPENDIX. 



POINTS OF THE COMPASS. 

(Principles of Being.) 

Life and Love, and Truth and Good, as Divine Prin- 
ciples, constitute our key to health (wholeness). 

Life, as a principle (divine), disproves the being of 
" disease," or " death." 

Love, as a principle (divine), disproves the being of 
"fear," or "hate." 

Truth, as a principle (infinite), disproves the being of 
" error," or u untruth." 

Good (God), as a principle, disproves the being of 
u evil," and affirms universal wholeness (health). 

These four points of the compass sweep the horizon 
of thought, and constitute our logical affirmation. 

Good, however, is the one polar ocean of being, in 
whose c ' Breath " of Divine Life and Love the Needle 
of Truth becomes the Index Finger (of God) . By this 
Index we discover the wholeness of the "Spiritual Body" 
(and of the " Social State") in the outer, as well as the 
inner courts of the Temple. 

Let the student rise in thought to the spiritual altitude 
of these immortal principles. Any one of them, by 
divine personification (being infinite), demonstrates the 
impossible being of all opposites, or finite negations. 

The demonstration is made by the Logos, or Divine 
Reason, as well as by Spiritual Intuition, or Divine Love. 

Love and Life are dually grouped, because Love is Life, 
and Life (divine, the only Life) is Love. 



POINTS OF THE COMPASS. 117 

Good and Truth are also dual, or inseparable. So is 
any divine attribute from any other, though not equally 
obvious in all dual relations. 

* Modes of Application. 

These must vary according to the idiosyncrasy or 
inspiration of the teacher, through whom the "Spirit" 
alone can give life and health. 

Begin, therefore, by orienting yourself — (in the silence 
which lulls the sense of the outer world and its illusive 
turbulence) . Thus prepare yourself to enter, reverently, 
the sphere of the student, and to teach (" heal") either in 
silence, or orally, as wisdom may direct. For it is not 
the attitude of the body, but of the soul, that is of divine 
consequence. The earnest, most fraternal, most cheerful, 
as well as most reverential manner, is best. 

Commence your sitting by holding firmly in the mind 
God (or one of the divine attributes) as the only reality, 
and the soul of the student as a perfect mirror thereof. 

Reverse the physical phenomena, — the outer body of 
your student, and your own, and of the entire realm of 
matter, — and see and sense only " God manifest." Over- 
shadow your student, as in the halo of Eternal Goodness, 
and realize his or her angel beholding the face of the 
Father and Mother in heaven, in whose reflection the 
" material" body disappears forever in the form and fea- 
tures of the spiritual. 

Deny the possibility of any other form or features of 
Truth, affirming the nonentity of the "mortal" body, 
and the entity only of the immortal. 

Destroy the fear of the student, in the name of Love, 
which is of the divine Substance, in whose image there 
can be no fear, and which excludes every other image. 



118 APPENDIX. 

Destroy " error" in the name of Truth, and " moral " 
disease, or " social " inharmony, and sorrow, in the omni- 
potence of Good. 

Affirm that mind only and not "matter" can make 
conditions, and that mind in truth (all the mind there is) 
affirms the reality of health only. 

Regard yourself as a teacher rather than " healer," 
whose concern is more with mental than with " physical" 
symptoms, knowing that the physical must conform to 
the mental, and both to the spiritual and eternal verities of 
being. 

Avoid stereotyped phraseology, or the formal use of 
any but the most impressive language, such as "God 
is Spirit," or "Peace, be still," which nuiy be emplo} r ed 
at the commencement and close of the demonstration. 

SUMMUM BONUM 

(Spiritually Comprehended) . 
God is Well ; and So am I. 



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